LEGO League blasts through UNF
By Laura Caso, First Coast News
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Students from Florida, Georgia and the Cayman Islands put their science, engineering and computer programming skills to the test, Sunday.
More than 250 students and adults, packed the University of North Florida. Together, they were showing off their inventions at the Regional First LEGO League’s Robotics Challenge, ‘Natures Fury’.
Mark MacCombs, from UNF School of Engineering, organized the event to bring young engineers into his world.
“The kids in this Lego League are so smart, they are motivated and they are doing things that people could never do 20 years ago,” MacCombs said.
Here’s how the competition works: FLL releases a “Challenge” based on a real-world scientific topic. Each challenge has three parts: the Robot Game, the Project, and the FLL Core Values. There are 24 teams competing to move on to the world’s First LEGO League competition in April in St. Louis.
Teams created solutions to natural disasters. One team, who calls themselves, ‘BrainStormers’ created a robot that fights fires. Team captain, Gokul Madathil, says it took the team one month to create the solution.
“We made a fire and tried to put it off with corn starch. When we mixed that with hot water, it became a gel-like hand sanitizer that put a blanket around the fire.”
(Photo: Laura Caso, First Coast News First Coast News’ Laura Caso stands with a team competing in the Regional First LEGO League Robotics Challenge.)
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