Own educational camp with poker, a 3D printer, robots and landing on Mars
“- They are very young, everything is ahead of them, and only ahead of us.”
“The ugly swans” A. and B. Strugatsky
My second post on Habré was "Children assembled the 3D printer" . Recently my dream came true - I roughly repeated the same thing with Russian schoolchildren.
In this publication I want to share
(such a miracle was discovered after the royal night, in addition to the doorknob smeared with toothpaste)
Camp, in whichGoogle Code Jam finalist holds a poker tournament , where instead of discos, guys go to solve the problems of olympiad programming, where everyone could print anything on a 3D printer (of course we didn’t print a gun, we just drew in Photoshop), where the children were co-authors of the article Habré and trained more younger children robotics camp where even
There are several reports on educational events on Habr that I was interested to read ( 1 , 2 , 3), but I know that a lot of things remain inaccessible to the general public (for example, mega-interesting ZPSh and KLSh projects). I want to encourage this publication a) those who participate in the organization of cool educational programs - write about it b) hawkers - participate in / organize camps / training programs.
Under the cat adventure of a 3d printer in the camp, a little about the "engineering Olympiad" and robotics.
Adventures of a 3D printer in an educational camp
On TED there is a story about how in Africa they stole a computer into a wall and left it for children to tear to pieces and they quickly mastered it - recorded audio and went online. I decided to repeat the experiment only with a 3d printer in Russia.
I put the box in the center of the room and said that you can figure it out yourself and do anything under my supervision. The most curious quickly installed software and drivers, and with the slogans "Manual for the wimps" in an hour were ready to print the first model.
But I gave them an additional quest - to figure out why the slicer did not start on my 8-ke. And sorted it out. And then the western began.
Each mistake was a stepping stone to understanding the operation of a 3d printer (including for me).
At first we used the printer as an engraver. The guys and I enjoyed the sounds with which brass draws a circle on the surface of aluminum and shades it. Looks like the platform got loose during transportation. 2 minutes - and we pushed it right. But it turned out that the printer refused to squeeze out the plastic. Read the entire manual. They stormed the topic of what might be wrong. We decided to disassemble and see what is inside. It seems that all the lights are on. People took a selfie against the background of a disassembled printer and sent it to Instagram. At the same time, I disassembled the extruder and we discussed the reduction coefficient and the principles of operation of stepper motors. It turned out that the nozzle was clogged with aluminum chips. Changed, following the exact instructions in the manual. The plastic has gone.
4 controllers. It is clear that one for each coordinate, why the 4th?
We hypothesize what could have happened.
Lecture on 3D printing (the history of 3D printers from 1984 to the present day, achievements of 3D printing in 2012 and 2013 , metal and stereolithographic printers). We discussed why nano-photographs are black and white and how to print in space (without support?)
We printed out a planetary bearing, but it refused to rotate. We had a road bike lying around and this is what the young engineers proposed. The bearing began to rotate, only the central gear melted.
Some girls checked out bracelets with hearts, and some - shell gears.
Hit of the season - TARDIS
To the article on Habré printed Kevin Mitnik’s business card.
Hex Nut
For space success, the guys received / will receive seven-sided nuts. (For reworking from a 6-sided nut, OpenSCAD is very convenient)
module hex_head (hg, df)
{
cylinder (h = hg, r = df / 2 / sin (360/7), $ fn = 7, center = false);
}
Barrel
For the “gardener / sprayer” robot on a 3D printer, we printed out the reservoir that we had previously drawn in SketchUp.
There are two small round sonar holes in the lid. To measure the water level.
Black wire - for the pump inside.
Debugging a gardener robot.
We figured out how to make the walls of the tank waterproof (set the layer thickness to 20% of the thickness of the nozzle), but the second task arose.
How to make the bottom of the tank waterproof? The guys and I did not find the answer to this question, so we used the waterproof tab of the "bag" type. Printer manufacturers then prompted the direction of the search - to increase the plastic feed rate.
Rubik's Cube
For a project to create a robot that collects a Rubik's cube, we needed adapters. They were drawn in Blender and sent to print.
Spider
The 3d printer came in handy for making paws for spider robots. Forgive us arachnologists and paleoarachnologists for 6 and 4 legs of "spiders".
According to the idea, the robot should collect parts from Lego around the room and look for socks.
The joking name is "chicken robot." (And there was also the politically incorrect name "robot crab").
Total 3d printer: mastered Blender, SketchUp, OpenSCAD and Photoshop (with support for 3d printing) for creating / adjusting models, Thingiverse - for downloading / uploading models, Slic3r and Repetier-Host for managing a 3d printer. Dismantled the printer and extruder, diagnosed malfunctions.
Percentage of Interested of the Total
In total, the camp had 60+ people in three groups: robotics, Olympiad programming, application development. Most interested were with robotics. 5-6 people showed very active interest, another 5-6 showed high interest, 10 people showed medium interest, the rest are indifferent (amid high employment on their projects).
Those who became interested even gave a mini-lecture to their parents who came to visit.
The guys also suggested making a robot from a 3D printer, so that he himself could come / fly / crawl / ride / ride to his manufacturers in the workshop and talk about what happened to him.
Choosing a 3D printer model for an educational project
For the design project, I would choose Ultimaker 2, but since the project was an educational one, and the guys had a technical mentality, the choice fell on PrintBox3d One (by the way, thanks to the people from RGT for meeting us and helped a lot). Firstly, it is on Arduino, and since we had a course on Arduino, the guys were interested to see its real application. Secondly, this printer is easy to disassemble and see what's inside (even an extruder), which is indispensable for training. Thirdly, it is practically indestructible, and if something goes wrong, it is easy to replace, since the production is in Moscow and there are a lot of parts. Fourth, you can talk almost with the developers of this printer, if you really need it. Fifth (imho), it is very valuable to show students that in Russia they can produce decent advanced equipment.
Crowdsourcing program for schools
There was a lot of discussion about how to put a 3d printer in each school without attracting third-party funding. By the forces of the students themselves and their parents. (If anyone is interested, I can share the best practices in this area).
Engineering Olympiad
In the history of astronautics, there are several cases when you had to perform an engineering feat with adhesive tape, on your knee and in a very short time.
The real task of Apollo 17 : Your electric car’s wing on the Moon has broken, the dust deposited on the suit reduces its reflective properties, which leads to unacceptable overheating. Minimize mission? Time to find a solution 1 night.
The real Apollo 13 task :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2YZnTL596Q
Task: to land an egg from 3 meters using 2 meters of paper tape and 100 tubes for a cocktail. t = 15 min:
Ready to land!
Tests By the way, only 2 of 6 teams managed to create a protective structure.
Doubleself after a successful landing.
Balance in nature. t = 15 min.
TRIK teacher Sergei Filippov described his creation in this way: “This design symbolized the water cycle in nature. From the lower right bucket, water regularly rose to the upper with the help of a hand and a mug. It was necessary to establish links, thanks to which, when emptying the lower bucket, the upper bucket would tilt and pour water back. The canister served as a counterweight. ”
Task: to build an umbrella from a skein of transparent tape and a roll of paper. t = 15 min: The
engineer is responsible for his designs.
An attempt to create a controlled jet aircraft from a balloon, adhesive tape and A4 sheets. The device must transport the payload (Turbo chewing gum) through the volleyball net from a distance of 2 meters. Throwing is prohibited, using the ball as a harness is prohibited. t = 15 min:
Before starting.
From the first time did not fly, maybe it will happen? The aircraft hung on the finish line.
Response to Apollo 13
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm5nUEG5Bjo
Response to Apollo 17 “
There is a clause in the instructions for astronauts: when going to the moon, don't forget scotch tape.”
(Scotch tape and maps)
Robotics
A detailed description of the program of the robotics course on Habré.
Sometimes children from a neighboring dance camp dropped in for classes, and then our people explained to them how robots are arranged.
Course adjustment (Time Lord socks with TARDIS) .
Meanwhile, the programmers: the
robot "Masechka".
Robot "Masechka" with protection from aggressive external environment. Patriotic version.
Weather station based on Arduino.
Landing on the moon and mars
The developer of the Orbit game, about which they wrote on Habré, stopped by to visit .
STEM- game "Orbit" is not just a space simulator, but the opportunity to feel yourself in an engineering team. It is not just physical knowledge that comes to the fore, but the ability to distribute a task in a team, coordinate requirements for a general engineering solution, etc. In the game, the principle is the freedom of action of the participants within the framework of the proposed models, including the ability to make mistakes and correct them.
The guys were divided into
Aleksey Fedoseyev noted the following in this regard: “On the third mission, the difference in engineering approaches became immediately apparent - some improved the existing device, others immediately tried to develop a conceptually new one.”
Two design bureaus successfully completed a difficult landing on Mars.
By the way, in September there will be a big “Orbit” tournament for schoolchildren.
I want to quote from the Strugatsky (by the way, today is the birthday of Arkady Natanovich ).
On Earth there were people, youth, children. ... Zhilin felt that he could help them a lot, at least some of them. ... To help them enter into life, to help them find themselves, to determine their place in the world, to teach them to want a lot at once, to teach them to want to work excitedly.
To teach not to bow to authorities, but to study them and compare their teachings with life.
To teach you to be wary of the experience of experienced people, because life changes unusually quickly.
To teach to despise the philistine wisdom.
To teach that to love and cry from love is not a shame.
To teach that skepticism and cynicism in life are cheap, that it is much easier and more boring than to be surprised and enjoy life.
To teach to trust the movements of the soul of your neighbor.
To teach that it is better to make mistakes in a person twenty times than to be suspicious of everyone.
To teach that it is not how others influence you, but how you influence others.
And teach them that one person is not worth a damn.
And finally, the
P.S. Many thanks to all thanks to whom this camp took place.
P.P.S. Roma Udovichenko noticed the feature of the article number
