Tag Archives: Rhyme Know Reason

Two FSR sponsored teams win highest awards

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Draco the dragon, Rhyme Know Reason’s robot, climbs the FTC mountain to rescue climbers and hang from highest cliff.
Students in Rhyme Know Reason celebrate after winning Inspire Award.
Team MOE 365 hard at work

Our two FTC teams are heading to state championship events

At two different FTC (FIRST Tech Challenge) qualifying competitions, MOE 365 and Rhyme Know Reason 8528 both earned the Inspire Award, the highest award given to an FTC team. This award is based on overall quality and accomplishments.

On November 21 in Marlton, NJ, MOE was also a member of the winning alliance in the field competition. The following week, on December 5 in Ambler, PA, Rhyme Know Reason was a member of the finalist alliance in the field competition. Inspire Award winners receive an automatic invitation to the next level of competition, in this case to the State Championships in New Jersey and Pennsylvania in February.

You can see both teams compete in the Diamond State Championship in Dover, DE, on February 6, 2016.

We are proud of the team members and their mentors and invite you to come out and cheer for them… all FTC competitions are free and open to the public.

What is an Inspire Award?

This judged award is given to the team that truly embodied the ‘challenge’ of the FTC program. The team that receives this award is a strong ambassador for FIRST programs and a role model FTC team. This team is a top contender for many other judged awards and is a gracious competitor. The Inspire Award Winner is an inspiration to other teams, acting with Gracious Professionalism™ both on and off the playing field. This team is able to communicate their experiences, enthusiasm and knowledge to other teams, sponsors, their community, and the Judges. Working as a unit, this team will have demonstrated success in accomplishing the task of designing and building a robot. (Taken from firstinspires.org)

FTC holds scrimmage event at Salem Community College

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FSR students report on their experiences at 2015 Duel on the Delaware

FTC Team 8528 displays banner created and donated by teammate, “Hardcore Stitches

FTC Team 8528 displays banner created and donated by teammate, “Hardcore Stitches”

Last October 17, the Duel on the Delaware (near the Delaware River in NJ) was a great chance for our team to share ideas with a variety of other teams and to get some practice on the field with other robots. Our sister team, MOE FTC 365, also attended the event.

In the morning two student members of our team taught an Engineering Notebook workshop to a full classroom of students from roughly ten different teams. We described what an engineering notebook was, why it was important, challenges and how to overcome them and more. After the presentation we shared our old notebook with everyone and shared ideas and advice with them one on one. Thankfully, everyone took a lot of notes and seemed to get a lot out of the workshop. We may even be asked to teach this workshop a third time at another scrimmage. Meanwhile, our teammates were learning programming at other workshops.

The night before the Duel, we worked really hard to make a solid chassis to use in the scrimmages but we didn’t have a second set of technology to install on it. Our Pennsylvania friends, the Flaming Phoenixes, had the tech but not a new chassis; but working together, we had a completely functioning “Flaming Rhymes” robot. At the Duel, we spent the afternoon working on it and competing together while sharing ideas, tools, and drive teams.

As the photo shows, we were proud to display our fantastic new team banner. Overall the day was a fun start to the (almost) competition season!

Submitted by members of Team 8528 Rhyme Know Reason

Team 8528 holds Robotics Notebook Workshop

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On August 22, 2015, FTC Team 8528, Rhyme Know Reason, held a workshop to help teams improve their notebook writing skills and to give them ideas on how to overcome obstacles in keeping an Engineering Notebook. Engineering or Lab Notebooks are a vital part of any engineer’s or scientist’s work.  But how does this translate for use in FTC?  

After winning the Think Award at two competitions last year, the team wanted to reach out to other teams to start the discussion on how to keep a good Engineering Notebook.  Three teams from Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were in attendance.  After a short presentation at the beginning of the workshop, teams were encouraged to discuss the difficulties associated with keeping a notebook and how their teams overcame challenges in past years.  Then the students broke up into three groups, mixing members from all the teams.  

They were tasked with building a mini catapult out of a variety of different pastas, tape, and Play-Doh, with the goal of launching a mini marshmallow as far as possible.  The exercise gave the students a chance to put into the practice the strategies they learned on how to make it less difficult to write in an Engineering Notebook (and have fun doing it!).  Each group kept a notebook during the activity, recording things like what the challenge was, drawings of prototypes and the final design, results of tests, and so on.  After testing the catapults,  Team Rhyme Know Reason gave out awards like ‘Most Detailed Notebook’, ‘Farthest Shooting Catapult’, and ‘Best Example of the Design Process’.  

The entire workshop was a lot of fun and they hope to hold more workshops later this year.  If you are interested in talking to the team about the Engineering Notebook, email them at rhymeknowreason@gmail.com.