Coach Wants Us To Fail As Often As Possible!?!

This afternoon I was helping my sister, Emily, build a robot.  We had looked through the instruction books and finally chose the style of a mars lander.  The design seemed simple enough and the only problem we had when making it was when we attached the gears to the base of the robot.  Using a device called a worm gear we gave the robot more control, and the added gears on the sides gave it more power.  When we finished our robot was very sturdy.

Excited to try it out, we created a simple go forward program, and found, to our dismay, that the robot barely moved an inch!  Emily and I tried one method after another only to come up against the same problem.  Studying our robot closely, we found that the gearbox, which had given our robot more precision, was actually the cause of our dilemma.  When we connected the wheels to this device it sucked up our energy while changing the direction of the motion.  

We brought our robot to our dad (The coach) for advice and he confirmed our theory.  Then we received a lesson on gears.  Coach explained how math fits into the usage of gears and gave us an example of a ratio.  Then he demonstrated how the different sizes of gears worked to either slow down the robot, maintain the same speed, or give the robot more speed while still giving it power.
Finally understanding what we needed to do, I took apart the robot and altered the base, removing the gear boxes and adding more support.  I showed Emily how to switch the direction of the motors while still maintain somewhat of the same design.  We replaced the tires with more durable ones and firmly attached the RCX to the base.  When we finished it looked nothing like the mars lander we had set out to build, yet it still had most of the same concept when using the gears.  

When Emily and I went to show coach our finished product, he said something that made my blood run cold.  
"I want you to fail as often as possible..." (Yikes, maybe we need a new coach) "so that during the competition you already know what works and what doesn't."  

In other words the coach wasn't telling us to build a robot to fail.  What he was trying to tell us was that he wanted us to experiment, like Thomas Edison, many times to find out what is the best way to succeed.  When we start the competition we won't have much time to experiment, so it is better to experiment before hand.

So if you hear about a lot of failures on our blog, don't be concerned.  Just stick with us till we get it right.

Wendy Mack
The LEGO Mountaineers

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