Tinkering Camp - Day 1

Tea and Sydney working on their battle-bot

Robot Knife Fight

Today at the Maker Kids lab, we experimented with circuits, soldering, carpentry and much more!

We began the construction of our robots first, which will soon be battling each other in an arena. We came up with the idea to attach a balloon to the back of each robot so instead of completely DESTROYING them, the idea is to pop the balloon on the back of the other robots using basically whatever creative ideas we can think of!

We started with a set of wheels, and expanded from there. Who knows what contraptions will be created…

Tara soldering her motor wires

Balloon-bot-building

Soldering Our Circuits

Next, we started to solder the circuits for our battle-bots togeather, and learned how to properly set up a circuit. This was probably the most challenging thing we did today, seeing as the circuit will only work if it is connected in all of the correct places.

However, we talked about how electricity is much like water, and it has to flow to make things work. This helped us understand what had to be done in order for the electricity to work. With some prior knowledge and a bit of patience , many of us got the wheels of our robots turning!

Group shot of the boys

Drawing Board: Water Balloon Cannons

Eventually, we had the entire group brainstorm ideas for building water balloon cannons. But, when the maker kids brainstorm, anything goes! We came up with many crazy ideas from catapults to air cannons to trying to hit each other.

Also, we came up with a few ideas for challenges that we could test with our cannons, such as hitting a moving target and setting a distance goal for how far we can launch a balloon. Soon, we’ll put our ballistic engineering skills to the test!

Thoughts of Tomorrow