Frontiers of Flight Moon Day Outreach

By Anuhya, Georgia, Alex, Tanvi, Fernando, Ren, Sol, Jai, Aarav, Krish, Bhanaviya, Darshan, and Jayesh

This past Saturday, we had a very fulfilling day at the 16th annual Moonday, honoring the anniversary of the first moon landing in 1969, hosted by the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas. There were approximately 1,150 attendees, primarily kids, who we introduced to robotics concepts like programming and designing. We were joined by team 7172, Technical Difficulties, who demonstrated their robots from Center Stage and Freight Frenzy.

We had 5 main stations we were presenting this year: our Hovercraft, our Air Cannon, our past season robots, Lego Sumo Robots and 3D printers.

We designed a hovercraft out of trash bags, a large circular piece cut out of plywood, copious amounts of duct tape, plastic and foam tubes and an industrial leaf blower. Kids were allowed to sit on our hovercraft and were guided around using a small rod, acting like a small carnival ride. They had a lot of fun feeling like they were floating on the hovercraft, and we learned a lot about being patient, especially when the kids weren’t listening to what we were telling them.

We also had an air cannon, which could “suck in” coke cans and then throw them out. Everyone enjoyed trying to aim the air cannon and then dodge the coke cans that came flying, and it became a game we all played.

We taught kids how to do simple block coding on Lego Sumo robots, where they learned how to use color sensors and how to detect whether the robot was on black ground or white ground. We taught them how to make the robots “fight” on the robot platforms, and they learned how motor functions can change how the robot moves and how adding wait times and loops can change how long the robot runs and what the robot can do automatically.

One of our most popular stations were the 3D printers. We taught the kids how to use a basic CAD software called SketchUp, where they learned how to make small keychains with their names on them. They learned how to create a sketch, how to extrude patterns, how to add text to their patterns, and they also watched us troubleshoot when problems arose on the 3D printers. They got to take their keychains home, and we ended up talking to a lot of parents about affordable 3D printer options and how they could keep teaching their kids about engineering.

We got a lot of questions about how parents could get their kids involved in more STEM activities, so we were able to introduce many of them to the FLL and FIRST community overall. We talked to them about starting their own FLL teams and talking to their school teachers about sponsoring robotics teams.

Overall, presenting at Moonday was a huge success and an amazing opportunity, because it’s incredible to interact with the community from which we get a lot of support. We also get to share FIRST with other kids, and hopefully they’ll grow to love the program from FLL to FTC, the way many of our members have.