WMU students learn robotics

The Winfield Mt. Union eighth grade students have a class about robotics. In part of that class, students learn about the transfer of energy and motion.

They build mechanisms in the early part of the class with VEX Robotics components and then apply those skills to building “pull toys,” where the movement of the wheels on the pull toy powers another mechanism.

The students create different ideas of how this transfer of movement will best be performed and then build their contraption based on those ideas.

One week is usually the time frame for designing, creating, building and troubleshooting the pull toys. Then, they are judged by a group of people that have not seen any of the building process.

A video is always made and posted on Mr. Kongable’s YouTube channel so students can learn what has been successful in the past for other students.

This year presented a difficult task for the judges as all of the pull toys were successful in making the motion of the wheels be the power to move another mechanism.

The winner was “Old Glory” built by Mitchell Cummings and Carter Thornton.

There was a tie for second place with “Whopper Whopper” by Justin Knipfer and August Giesleman and “Just Keep Swimming” by Kaylynn Kellogg and Josie Ford.

The video of the competition can be seen on YouTube under the title “Pull Toy Excellence!” on the Mr. Kongable channel.