It has been a great school year hear at Edison Computech Middle School. I really enjoyed this school. This school isn't for kids who are bullies, kids who don't like to study, or kids that just aren't all that smart. I asked Mrs. Baird at the beginning of the school year how many 7th graders get an 4.0 all year long. Mrs. Baird told that only 10-12 kids get an 4.00 all year long. At first I was very shocked because maintaining an 4.00 isn't all that hard. I have had a 4.00 since 1st grade, and it was very easy. Here at Computech it is not as easy as it sounds. Maintaining a 4.00 means that doing all of your class work and studying for 8 different classes. Kids only have 6 classes at other schools. That makes it a lot easier there than here. I probably get the most homework in my computer class, and this is the class that most other schools don't mandate.
The hardest quarter all year long would have been the 2nd quarter. There were many things due towards the end of the 2nd quarter. It was also the end of the first semester. There were many projects and tests going on at that time which made it difficult to maintain an 4.00. I worked hard, and I was successful. Not once did I give up on my self, and that's how it is today.
Today afterschool I have a robotics pizza party. We are also going to disassemble our robots. We had 2 robots, but we sacrificed our line follower to upgrade swagbot 1.0 to swagbot 2.0. Our battle bot also known as swagbot was slow and had a small back shield. When we sacrificed our line follower to swagbot, our robot's back shield became taller and wider. We also took off our gars on the tires so our robot could be faster. We were decreasing the speed, but increasing the power of the engine. The engine really didn't become more powerful, it just became slower. That is why we took off the gears from swagbot. This was one of the upgrades we made to our robot. I think we could have changed the location of the 3rd engine and made it higher. I guess these are all changes we will make to make our robot the best and so we can get a 1st place medal instead of a 3rd place medal.
I thought that our line follower was going to win, and our battle bot was going to lose. We thought that the battle bot was going to lose because we had only one day of practice. The line follower we tested over and over, and it was successful. When we got to the competition, we saw the other robots. Corbin and I walked around and we were looking at other school's ideas. There was only one battle bot from another school which had a similar design. The other designs were to basic, and there was no way they could possibly win. I hope I am on next year's First Lego League Team.
Today Mr. Armstrong is going to grade most of our websites. I have done all of my jobs, the same can't be said for the rest of my group. One of my group members isn't here all that much over personal reasons. This is also the person in my group who gets the most work done. This leaves me at a disadvantage. Another kid in my group logs off when the five minute bell rings. Therefore, he gets 5 less minutes to work, he also argues a lot, and he does not know what he is doing. I told this very same person to make a thinglink, and he made one; except for the fact that photo he grabbed off the internet didn't have the right license meaning that it was illegal! This person can't do anything right. He needs help finding the animal on our website. He has never looked at the website! The last person in my group is good at what he does except for the fact that he gets very side-tracked and he does not complete all of his work on time. He's a smart kid, he just gets side-tracked. I hope I get a good grade!
As I said in my previous blog, I won my game against Robbie. It was very close and it was almost a stalemate. Robbie made one bad move, and that cost him the game. We were 50-50. That mistake caused it to be 51-49 with me in the lead. This lead became bigger and bigger until I won. Today, Neil and Jacob were supposed to play each other, and Jacob was sick, and they stalemated 3 times, they were both out of town last week, and Jacob was sick today. At first Mr. Brown was going to do a coin toss to see who is the winner from Jacob and Neil's match, but then Mr. Brown said that he was going to advance me and disqualify both Jacob and Neil since they are gone so often or stalemate so often. Yay! That's one more match that I don't have to play.
I am in the final four right now, and I can easily make it to the final 2 very quickly if Jacob and Neil are both disqualified. I hope I don't make the same mistake Robbie made when I play next time.
I remembered to show up for Chess Club! I usually have something to do on Fridays. I thought that last Thursday was Friday, and when I showed up to Mrs. Dineen's room there was no one there. The next day when it actually was Friday I forgot to show up. I have noticed that I remember Chess Club every 3 weeks. I forget Chess Club for 2 weeks, then the next week I remember. This cycle just repeats over and over again. I am happy because today I remembered Chess Club after missing 1 week. I have had a game going with Robbie for about 2-3 months now, and we just finished it today. I won!
Last time we played it seemed that it was going to be a stalemate. Robbie moved his king in the wrong direction, and this helped me get 2 queens in about 5 turns! That is awesome. I'm not saying Robbie isn't a good chess-player, it's just that he made a mistake which cost him the game. This happens to me all the time when I am talking to someone as I play. Some people try to distract me so that I will mess up. This happened to me several times during the Chess-Tournament at Manchester Gate. I didn't win, but I do plan on getting better, and eventually I will become ranked.
A while ago, my egg drop worked with a lot of ease. The next step is to get a 9 by 12 inch mechanism onto a 2 by 2 inch mechanism. I am thinking about have 2 parachutes. One parachute will be connected to the egg mechanism. The egg mechanism will also have styrofoam on the other side. This way we have the parachute to slow down the speed of the mechanism which will decrease the speed. The styrofoam is on the other side to absorb the shock when the egg hits the ground. The other parachute will be on the rocket. When the engine makes the final pop, the egg mechanism will deploy, and the parachute will come out, and the parachute on the rocket will also come out. This way, both the egg, and the rocket will survive.
Also, if Mr.West ever wanted to reuse my rocket, all he would have to do is insert the engine. I don't like the idea of having the egg comeback down with the rocket. I think that there is a very good chance of at least part of the rocket breaking at the very least, and some eggs will also break. I hope our egg survives! I'll tell you how it went once we launch.
Our Egg Drop worked! Our design had styrofoam on the sides and bottom. This is when the egg drop hits the ground, the styrofoam will absorb the shock. The parachute is also to help the egg drop. It is to slow down the speed of the egg drop and to absorb the shock. When Mr. West was getting ready to drop our Egg Drop, he had to quickly tape the parachute again. We thought that our parachute was a fail, and our egg drop was to heavy. We were wrong. It was not to heavy, it was just right, and our egg drop slowly glided down to safety. Some of the other eggs had small cracks which caused the eggs to drip with yolk. It was gooey and disgusting. Only 3 of 19 egg drops failed in our class. On the other hand, 13 out of 22 egg drops failed in Mr. West's first period class. We were very excited. Some of the ideas were very complex. Now, the next step is to figure out how to put a raw egg on a rocket. This will be very interesting.
In Mr. West's class, we are doing an egg drop. Mr. West is going to go on top of the roof and drop our egg drop structure. We are going to insert an egg on the day of the egg drop which is supposed to be April, 12. The goal is to make sure that the egg will survive. Originally we came up with an elevator idea, and that when the box hits the floor, the egg moves a little but not enough to break the egg. This didn't work out very well, and we are adding a parachute, and we are going to get some marshmallows to put on the inside. I looked up the parachute idea, and it did not work very well. When my friend threw his into the air, it came back down softly. I am going to build a parachute this weekend or at least get the supplies to build one.
At the beginning of the school year, I joined Computer Club. About 2 months after I joined Computer Club, I signed up for basketball. Towards the end of the season, I joined Science Bowl, and I did this for about 3 months. I did this at lunch and before school. We had come so close to winning. We were first defeated by one Computech Team 1, we then defeated and eliminated Computech Team 3. We were very close to winning but were eliminated.
After Science Bowl had ended, I signed up for Robotics in which we did the Line Follower which we spent about 3 months on, but it did not place. Our battle bot on the other hand placed 3rd, and we had only 3 weeks to build it and about a day and a half to practice. We need to come with something different because most schools are going to copy our design for the popping mechanism. I then began Spelling Bee this Tuesday, and I placed 13th out of 33. Not bad for 3 days of practice. I now am going to start Boy's Volleyball. If you haven't been able to tell, my schedule is very busy.
Our robotics tournament is tomorrow, and I need to practice with the battle bot. I am doing the line follower and the battle bot. For the line follower, we had to program our robot to be able to follow a black line with white space around it. Since we were not able to program our robot to follow the line since the light sensors were to wide, we programmed it to follow the white space around the black line instead. Also, we have to do a live challenge. In our live challenge, they are going to tell us to make changes to the robot or to our program. I find this ridiculous since our live challenge is before the actual event, so this going to be interesting.
For battle bot, there are 2 controllers on our team since I want to control the battle bot, and one of the other kids in our group wants to control the battle bot. We argued over this for a long time. The thing that I don't think is fair is that when Prabhmeet, the other kid who wants to control the battle bot, was building the robot, he always practiced. I had told him then that we can practice afterwards, right now lets just build the battle bot. Instead, he continued to practice. Now, when I practice, he wants to practice which I think is unfair.
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