Negative Kelvin Yields Positive Results

Saturdays have meant long hours of tech time for the fifteen-members of the Justin-Siena robotics team, Negative Kelvin (a.k.a. FIRST FTC Team 10434). Since October, these industrious engineering students, along with coaches Mr. Chris Fidler ’02 and Mr. Garry Carpenter, have been learning, building, and preparing for FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) league competition.
Their weekend work and timed logged over Christmas break are starting to pay dividends. Well into their rookie year, Negative Kelvin members have gained valuable experience through practices; scrimmages; outreach working with younger teams; and, of course, competitions. Their final competition is February 6 in Roseville.

According to Mr. Carpenter, the team has grown and learned a lot this year. He explains that the competition is presented in the form of a game—this year called Res-Q, which has a mountain climbing motif. Teams are required to build robots that can achieve a number of different functions such as climbing, clear debris off a path, accessing levels to “rescue” distressed “hikers,” and more. Points are tallied in a number of different ways from form and function to team dynamics and presentations. Mr. Carpenter was really proud of how the group worked as a team and looked out for each other.

Two key members of the team Elizabeth Hyde ’17 and Joey Devine ’17 were nominated and are semi-finalists in the league’s DEAN’s List Awards.

As a junior, Elizabeth is in her third year of Project Lead the Way engineering classes and is planning to take a fourth year as a senior. Elizabeth’s interest in robotics was first realized taking these classes, which led her to volunteer for two weeks in the summer of 2014 as an “intern” for Justin-Siena’s summer Robotics Institute. During those weeks Elizabeth’s knowledge of design and programming grew as she guided twenty 6–8th grade students to design, build, program, and compete with their own robots in two one-week programs. Two of those whom she coached, Max VonStrasser and Etienne Robin, are now full members of the team.

Mr. Carpenter sang her praises. “Elizabeth constantly shows a willingness to be a selfless leader, who will work tirelessly toward achieving any and all goals of the team, and who will take on all responsibilities to help her teammates. Her team and mentors love her and appreciate all of her hard work.” She is highly regarded by her peers. The entire team looks to her as the leader and central organizer of everything they do. She does not work specifically in programming, building, or Autodesk 3-D modeling, despite being perfectly qualified in all of these areas. Instead, she immediately took it upon herself to go over the rulebook with a fine-toothed comb, and to seek out resources about the judging and presentation aspects to see what was required and to research what other teams had done. As such, she quickly became the go-to person for questions about what needed to be done and how it should be done for maximum success, as well questions about rules of the 2016 Res-Q game.

Mr. Carpenter shared, “She is also the only member who has taken an active interest in the financial realities and budgeting needs of the team. She is able to tell other students what may be realistic or cost effective when they are brainstorming solutions, and has taken an active role in developing outreach and fundraising efforts for our very young team. Elizabeth has also put an impressive effort toward the team’s engineering notebook, with a keen eye for organization and aesthetics. She has done a terrific job of making sure that write-ups are done by each sub-group within the team, so that we maintain an accurate log of our development process.”

Although part of a young team, Joey Devine ’17 has already shown himself to be instrumental in the success of the team, both in the arena and behind the scenes. Joey is in his third year of Project Lead the Way engineering coursework and is planning to take Civil Engineering as a senior. He plans to attend college in the Pacific Northwest or in his home state of California, and already has hopes of continuing to work with FIRST beyond high school, as a volunteer or mentor.

According to Mr. Carpenter, “he has stepped into the role of organizer. He does not specifically work with the build team or the programmers, but instead takes steps to ensure that things are getting done in all areas of the team, and assigns tasks to people when they are in need of something to work on. He is great at asking the question ‘what needs to get done?’ and if no one else is available to work on it, he steps in without hesitation, regardless of the job.” Joey has worked extensively with Elizabeth on the engineering notebook, has worked on construction of FLL field tables and our FTC field perimeter, and has kept a close eye on all other aspects of the team’s work.

Mr. Carpenter continued, “Joey is an outstanding example of gracious professionalism on our team. This professionalism truly showed during our first competition this year. In the morning, while we were in the pit area and other teams were showing up, Joey stepped up in a big way to push our team to go communicate with the other teams. He looked over the schedule, assigned people to go and talk to our partners and formulate plans with them, and also toured around the pit area introducing himself and chatting with partners and competitors alike. Near the end of the competition day while many team-members were relaxing between final rounds, Joey was busy at work updating the engineering notebook to reflect the team’s experience at the tournament.”

Part of being involved in FTC is to include outreach in the scope of team activities. As a service-oriented school, Justin-Siena students have plenty of ideas. Justin-Siena hosted a 16-team FIRST Lego League competition in November 2015. Sixteen youth teams came from around the greater Bay Area to compete in this student-organized competition and the 2015 Champs were St. John’s Lutheran. Currently the team is in the process of organizing a video game party with the proceeds to benefit a local charity.

Mr. Carpenter speaks enthusiastically about next year and building upon all they have learned in their rookie year. The real-life practical experience our students are gaining by being a part of this are vast and will serve them well. Kudos to these young engineers for “braving” a trail for robots and for inspired learning for all.
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Justin-Siena High School

4026 Maher Street
Napa, CA, 94558
United States
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Justin-Siena is a Lasallian Catholic college preparatory community that serves young people in grades 9–12.