Cinco Ranch High School’s “CRyptonite” Robotics Team Demos Robot At ExxonMobil’s Introduce A Girl To Engineering Day
For the third year in a row, Cinco Ranch High School’s Robotics Team 624 (“CRyptonite”) was invited by ExxonMobil Chemical Company to represent FIRST® (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics at an Introduce A Girl To Engineering Day event. Held annually by ExxonMobil Chemical, this program helps junior high girls envision careers in engineering and encourages them to get involved in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) courses and activities in high school. ExxonMobil Chemical supports FIRST and Team CRyptonite as one of the team’s corporate sponsors.
Fourteen members of Team CRyptonite, along with last season’s basketball-shooting robot, “Panzer” travelled to ExxonMobil’s west Houston office on February 15 to show how helping to design and build a robot as part of a FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) team has allowed them to experience solving real-world engineering and technology problems.
An all-freshmen group of Team 624 girls was called upon to handle much of this demo for about 200 girls from KISD’s West Memorial and McDonald Junior Highs.
Zoe Burch and Nasa Xu showed how the robot works and talked about the build process. Aided by Daniel Lambert and Bill Waters, some of the junior high girls got to try their hand at driving the robot and shooting baskets.
Stephanie Grace, Susana Simmonds and Andrea Zaharie explained the robot’s pneumatic system to the girls, while Leah Button-Edelson and Jordan Wood did the same for the electronic system.
Team 624 Student President, Fraser Head talked about robotics competitions, and showed photos and video of the team in action. Pneumatics Captain David Gros was also there to answer questions.
The junior high students asked many questions, and were particularly impressed with the fact that just last year several of the Team 624 girls were in their shoes, attending this event with Cinco Ranch Junior High. At the end of the program, one of the most common questions from the junior high girls was, “Does the high school I’ll attend have a robotics team?”
Founded by inventor Dean Kamen, FIRST was created to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology. FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is an annual competition that helps students discover the rewards and excitement of science, engineering, and technology. The 2012 season included over 2,500 teams.
FRC combines the excitement of sports with science and technology to create a unique Varsity Sport for the Mind™. Participants are eligible to receive nearly $16 million in scholarships from some of the finest science and engineering schools in the country.
Since its founding in 2000, Cinco Ranch High School’s FIRST Robotics Competition Team 624 (“CRyptonite”) has achieved national recognition in all areas of FRC competition. Team highlights from 2012 include advancing to the divisional Semi-Finals of the FRC World Championship and the Indiana Robotics Invitational, winning the Bayou Regional Qualifying Event, advancing to the Finals at the Lone Star Regional Qualifying Event, along with capturing awards for quality, innovation and industrial safety.
This has been possible through the generous financial and mentor support of our corporate sponsors, including founding sponsors BP America and Oceaneering Intervention Engineering. Other corporate sponsors include: ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil Chemical, Wood Group, BAE Systems, Texas Workforce Commission, Kinder Morgan, West Engineering Services, MTS, Shell and Dockwise. We’re also indebted to numerous teachers, parents, mentors and our incredibly hardworking students.
To learn more about FIRST Robotics Competition visit: http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc
For more information on Team 624, visit http://team624.org/.
