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Ross Middle school fields engineering team

Zach Wells, 13, of the Metal Chihuahuas robot team, attaches the computer and batteries to his team's Lego robot, R2D2, for a test run Wednesday, Nov. 18, at the Ross Local Schools administration building. A group of Ross Middle School students are taking building blocks to a higher plane as they prepare for a FIRST LEGO League competition Dec. 4-5 at the Lakota East Freshman School in Liberty Twp.

Staff photo by Pat Auckerman Zach Wells, 13, of the Metal Chihuahuas robot team, attaches the computer and batteries to his team's Lego robot, R2D2, for a test run Wednesday, Nov. 18, at the Ross Local Schools administration building. A group of Ross Middle School students are taking building blocks to a higher plane as they prepare for a FIRST LEGO League competition Dec. 4-5 at the Lakota East Freshman School in Liberty Twp.

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By Richard O Jones, Staff Writer 10:58 PM Wednesday, November 18, 2009

ROSS TWP. — Ross Middle School students are taking building blocks to a higher plane as they prepare for a FIRST LEGO League competition in December.

FIRST is an acronym for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, a program founded by Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway, that helps students build self-confidence and life skills through engineering.

According to advisEr Jennifer Noxsel, for the first part of the competition, students research a real-world problem that impacts their community, develop an innovative solution, and present their findings to members of their community.

This school year, the theme is transportation, and the four teams at Ross Middle School chose diverse problems such as getting rid of snow on the highways and maintaining traffic through a school lunch line.

One group calling themselves The Metal Chihuahuas came up with a thermodynamic snow and ice melting system that would use pipes under the asphalt in roadways to circulate geothermal heat in a water and methanol cocktail.

“It would be expensive to install but would pay off in the long run,” said team member Zach Wells.

The team RossTechnix did a study of the lunch lines at their school and found that it took 22 to 25 minutes for a student to get through the lunch line, leaving them only 7 minutes to socialize and eat, and so have created a more efficient system, said team member Josh Lierer.

The other part of the competition involves programming a LEGOs robot to complete a set of missions on a table of ramps and obstacles.

“Team members have to agree on designs, which missions to accomplish and how they are going to do it,” Noxsel said, “so team building is a big part of what they are learning.”

Ross will be among 30 local teams competing Dec. 4-5 at the Thunderhawk Regional FLL Competition at Lakota East Freshman School in Liberty Twp.

“Teams will be judged on their research presentations, technical robot design presentations, teamwork, and robot performance on the mission field,” Noxsel said.

Winners will advance to the state competition, with opportunities to move on to national and international competition.

Contact this reporter at (513) 820-2188 or rjones@coxohio.com.

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