Made by Women
7701E-Eclipse
Entry ID #: 6117
Created: Mon, Jan 14, 2019 6:39 PM
Made By Women Only around 5% of all roboticists in the world are women. The recent rise in the girl power movement directly affects our team. Our team has tried to extend our arms to interest other individuals. We have each tried our hands at each of the different fields of robotics such as programming, building, and driving, and have found those that we are the most successful at. Through the program in the school, we have tried to diversify the team to become a more inclusive environment for all. One of our main influences has been Marie Curie. Curie faced difficult conditions at every phase of her career and often worked in poor conditions. Yet despite this hardship, she still managed to win multiple Nobel prizes. Her work with radium, polonium, and radiation, in general, is still widely renowned today. Her accomplishments despite her difficulties and hardships are an inspiration to everyone on our team and club and many young women throughout the world. When we hear the phrase girl-power we think of the world. We think the world is powered by women because women have made many of the key advancements to our past and present knowledge, but many of their findings have been published by men. One example of this would be Rosalind Franklin. Rosalind Franklin took the first picture of the DNA double helix. However, before she could publish it she fell ill due to all of her work with radiation. Then Watson and Crick, other scientists of her time, stole her work and published it as their own. Girl power is reflected by Franklin and Curie because they both faced difficulties and overcame them to become some of the most well-known female scientists in the world. These women and many others in the stem field make great accomplishments despite the hardships they face, and because of this, they can be considered great role models for all of those in stem especially women. They teach us that despite the hardship you should endure because, in the end, it is worth it. Our team has tried to model ourselves after these women and in the process, we have each tried on different roles such as programmer, driver, and designer. In years past a member of our team, Mia Brake has been the leading person to log in our engineering notebook. However this year a different member of our team, Lilia Arrizabalaga, has taken over that position. While we all contribute to the building of the robot each one of us also has more specialized jobs. The programmer on our team, Camilla Walbank, has had to adapt to the new program style this year, however, she has overcome this challenge and successfully provided a program for our team. This year our team made a decision to use a method of driving called dual remotes, this consists of using two remotes which are controlled by two different drivers. Lilia Arrizabalaga and Kaitlyn Brake have taken on those roles and they work together often to improve their teamwork and driving in order to raise our score in competitions. In Vex robotics there is an engineering notebook that can be completed to provide more points to any team who submits one, the notebook is a lot of work for just one person so we use the skills that our team members have to help us. Mia Brake is a talented artist and we put her abilities to the test. We challenged her with the task of drawing the complex designs and ideas that cross our minds. To an outside person, robotics may appear to consist of mainly building a robot. However, so much more goes into it and all member of our team contribute their skills and attempt to further them in order to make our team the best it can be. In conclusion, our team has embraced the girl-powered initiative by trying to exemplify such figures as Marie Curie and Rosiland Frankland. Each member of our team brings a unique set of skills to the group and we have all tried on different roles such as driver, programmer, and builder. We do this to ensure each person can fully develop and explore their unique skill sets. We always strive to encourage diversity in the robotics program by attempting to recruit members, especially females of our community. In fact, we participated in the Vex Promote challenge and hope that our video will inspire many young women to join and participate in our robotics program. We feel that diversity has positively impacted our team because as a team of all females we understand that it is a rare opportunity and as such strive to make to most of every practice and competition. Girl-powered is a synonym for Earth and every day our team, 7701E, strives to prove it.