GIE Special

Girls in Engineering (GIE) had the amazing opportunity to host a workshop at College of Lake County's STEM Day for high school girls. The event was held at the campus's technology building. Girls attending this event were able to explore their STEM interest with workshops ranging from environmental improvement to nanotechnologies! Some girls came from as far away as Chicago and Michigan to participate in this STEM-tastic event!

GIE's workshop featured our signature hands-on experiments. The session began with a presentation by our members about our encounters with STEM and highlighting the research we've conducted on the status of females in engineering. After the presentation wrapped up, GIE members performed Elephant Toothpaste. The reaction between the yeast and hydrogen peroxide was explained while girls were encouraged to come up, put their hands in the foam, and experience the exothermic enthalpy of the reaction. Then we moved to the experiments the girls could do all my themselves! First, girls conjured up bouncy balls from borax and glue. They explored the chemical reaction that occurred in order for the solid so develop a higher spring capability. The last activity consisted of an engineering challenge. Groups of 3 or 4 were given foam tubing and masking tape and tasked to create the most fun roller coaster with the longest ride time for maximum enjoyment. You can see some of their innovative creations below!

You may remember a few weeks ago when we posted about making a social experiment with our outreach program Girls In Engineering (GIE). We are proud to announce that the experiment video has been compiled and is now available for your viewing pleasure at our YouTube page! The video examines the experiment result trends such as the emphasis on associating other's occupation with that of those we are familiar with leading to the importance of female STEM role models for young girls. Click here to watch the video!

Elephant Toothpaste Interaction

GIE's new brochure with biographies of all our members

Britany Osterman presenting

Courtney concentrating on her bouncy ball creation

One of our creative teams with their roller coaster

Kristie showing off her bouncy ball coated hands

Build Season: 99% Loaded

As the build season comes to a close, the robot is finally being completed. The design and fabrication team finished building the robot and let the controls and programming team get their hands on it. The controls team is working on finalizing the wiring of the robot. The programming team is getting a hands-on experience with the robot, which is helping them perfect their code.

Today the drivers were selected. Tanner Thompson was chosen as the main driver and Stephanie Slowik was chosen as the secondary driver.

Controls mounting motors to chassis

Mr. Balla testing code on chassis motors

Programmers working on code

Although there are only four days are left until bag and tag day, the team is making diligent progress. The team is very anxious to see how the robot performs. Stay tuned for more updates!

Build Season Update!

We are approaching the end of our build season period with only 1 week left!

Our Design and Fabrication team is mounting the final components of the robot onto the chassis, and they are also getting ready to hand over the robot to Controls, who is currently working on their controls board.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Stemapalooza

Saturday, February 13th, Girls In Engineering spent a fun day at Girl Scouts' STEMapalooza. The event was held at the beautiful Challenger Learning center in Woodstock, and was held to encourage and inspire girls to get interested in STEM.

STEMapalooza hosted many stationed activities, ranging from robotics to 3D printing. At our station, we had exciting experiments like creating tin foil boats and constructing towers out of pasta. With the tin foil boats, participants received a sheet of aluminum foil and they had to float five Hersey kisses; if they were successful. that they got to keep the kisses! This experiment was a big hit with not only the girl scouts, but also with the parents. The other fun filled activity was to build a tower with only five pasta noodles and two marshmallows. The goal was to construct it higher then our tower. With this event, so many girls became interested in STEM, which we were happy to see.

Without this event, many girls would have missed this experience with the wonders of STEM, and consequently in the future, might not be as likely to enter a STEM related field. We were ecstatic about STEMapalozza because we're always looking for new opportunities to get young girls involved and open to STEM. Both Girls In Engineering and Girl Scouts had so much fun at this event! 

Girls In Engineering members Sage and Jessica

Tin Foil Boats

Parents and Scouts

Marshmallow Towers!

Amazing towers from Girl Scouts!

Crunch Time!

As the season is winding down, progress is slowly but surely being made. Today, the design and fabrication team is working on finishing up some of the sub-mechanisms, but faced a problem when the band saw broke down. Because of this, design and fabrication leader Tanner, had to spend time assembling a new band saw. Although the band saw broke, sub-mechanisms are close to being done. Progress on the chassis of the robot is also close to being finished, but some minor setbacks are impeding progress.

The controls team was working on designing a two tiered controls board, which would use less space and give more real estate for the sub-mechanisms to mount on the chassis. The programming team was working on foundational robot code for robot vision and sub-mechanism movement. But because of the unfinished status of the robot, their code is not totally completed.

Drivers are also anticipating the finishing of the robot, to get their hands on the robot and practice driving. Drivers were selected this week when they were asked to take a driver practical and driver test with the robot from last year. Hopefully by the end of today, there will be a robot completely assembled and ready to test on.

Justin Giss milling

Two tiered controls board

Chassis Gains

Today the Chassis team finished the wooden prototype principles of design. They are having trouble getting the chain to the correct tension; however once that is fixed, they will mount a control board on the chassis and make sure it is fully operational.

We would like to thank Mrs. Goff for being so generous and bringing her home cooked food. We greatly appreciated her delicious pasta and tasty cookies.

The mentors had another meeting today. Thank you for all the mentors who continue to support us! Chairman's worked on planning the donation drive and setting up possible fundraisers fro the future.

The build season is already halfway done! We now have three more weeks of hard work, and we hope to see your continued support.