City students to represent India at the First Lego League world championship

COIMBATORE: The 10-member team of city students, who won the national-level First

Lego

League (FLL) that was held recently in Bengaluru, would represent the country at the world championship to be held at Detroit in the USA in April.


The team from Bigbodhi Academy in the city had excelled in technical round, building and programming a robot, project making and team work, which are the major criteria for the international competition, which would be conducted by Lego education Denmark and FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).

“This year’s theme is ‘into orbit’ and students should know science and technology pertaining to the theme. The goal is to inculcate interest in science among the students. The team under the age group of 6-16 years had competed with 40 teams across the country at the national level. Now, they will compete with 108 teams at international level,” said C Santha Kumar, Bigbodhi Academy.

Pointing out that they had managed to clear 10 of the 15 tasks within two and half minutes, team member Rohit Sudhakar, a Class IX student, said they designed the robot in a way that it could do multiple tasks without having to make any change to it. “We managed to complete 10 of the 15 tasks within three runs, helping us save a lot of time.”

He said information like the distance to be moved, turning point and angle, and action to be performed should be fed accurately into the robot and even a minute error would collapse the entire system. Explaining that he was into robots for the past three years, Rohit said the real challenge that they faced was attaching additional components to reduce runs and maintaining its compact size.

Another member, V Thanish, a Class VIII student, said they had submitted a project explaining that fuel could be generated from the soil in Mars and the concept was inspired from petrol pumps.

“In Martian soil, a huge amount of

potassium

is present. Upon burning, it turns into potassium superoxide, which produces potassium carbonate and excess oxygen when it reacts with carbon dioxide. When hydrogen, which is also present in the soil, reacts with carbon dioxide, methane and water could be obtained.” Methane could be used as fuel for space crafts and rockets.

These things are essential for human survival in a different planet and this would pave path for humans to travel further, he said. Thanish said he had been regularly following the activities of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), which helped him to come up with the idea of producing fuel from soil.


Explore the yearly horoscope 2025 for Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, and Pisces zodiac signs. Spread love this holiday season with these New Year wishes, messages and quotes.