Meeting #6 - 11/21/09

Our last meeting prior to Thanksgiving, if you haven't yet please logon to the doodle page to show what meeting times will work for you so we can schedule our meetings from now until 2010!  Click below to link to the Doodle page...


The team did some brainstorming on their main challenge today. They have at least one rough concept involving a robotic garbage can that changes someones life. The person whose life changes is a cranky person who throw their recyclables into the garbage can, the garbage can is able to somehow detect this and rejects the recyclables in some way, potentially by either having a mouth open or by being thrown out somehow. This action by the robot garbage can changes their life and they become a happy recycling person. At least that is how I think it went! The robots actions cannot be started with "direct physical contact" this lead to an interesting diversion where the team brainstormed ways to cause things to happen without "direct physical contact" which led to an interesting game or rolling a small roll of electrical tape down a ramp, into a pop up power unit, which knocked over a pyramid of cups. I have some pictures of the action so check out the photo album, this was completely spontaneous and unplanned.

We did a couple of instant challenges also. One involved rotating squares with letters on them to try and create words. The challenge was kind of a dud. They decided to do "boys vs. girls" and for the record the girls won ;-)

We also did a challenge where the team had to take six "coins" (we actually used pieces of paper) half heads and half tails and reverse their positions by flipping and jumping the coins, etc. The trick was there was a very easily solution where you just flip the position by moving the object they are on, in this case we had the "coins" on a wheeled table. For the first go around the team flipped all over and it took 6 moves, when told there was an easier solution Luke quickly realized you just spun the table around, these DI kids are way to smart!


They then did a performance based IC where they had to use a blanket as a prop and have a story with a mystery, a clue, and a solution. Their story involved a dementor (a creature from Harry Potter) who loses a shoe while attacking someone leading the investigators to find the dementors.

That's it for this weeks meeting, remember to go to Doodle to indicate what meeting times will work for you so we can schedule our next batch of meetings.