Justin Randall’s engineering students presented their projects to the Rhinebeck school community during the final period of the school day on March 25.
A sensor was used to sort marbles by color and direct them to the proper container at the end of a course. Students started this project in February.
“We’ve done this project for a few years now,” said Randall. “Project Lead the Way changed its curriculum, but it’s such a fun project that I continue to do it because it gives them the opportunity to follow an engineering process of designing something, testing it out, and having to make changes to it.”
Fisher Mundigo challenged himself by sorting four different colored marbles – yellow, blue, green and red.
Mundigo said he sorted 840 marbles and the sensor was quite accurate in determining the marbles. The junior added something changed in the final days of testing and his project was not working as well.
Mundigo said his project was fine for the presentation.
“When it’s not driving me insane, it was a blast,” he said. “You’ve been given free reign and access to a bunch of robotic things to make something cool. I like that.”
Mundigo added, “When possible, make everything as simple as possible. This thing is an engineer’s dream and a mechanic’s nightmare. When it works, it works beautifully.”
Jack McColl chose to sort marbles of three different colors – red, black and blue and said the designing and testing of the project took longer than he expected.
“We had free reign to make the project how we saw fit as long as it accomplished the task,” he said. “Everyone had the same task, but as you see, there are different projects in the room with different approaches.
“I really enjoyed the problem solving that went into this and actually making it work.”
Kaia Rouse sorted 15 marbles by the colors of red, green and blue.
“This is probably one of my favorite projects we’ve done because it’s really different,” the junior said. “It was a lot more intricate and you really had to think how am I going to make it complete. I hope it gives me a better understanding of how to code and how to problem solve because it’s hard.”
Rouse said about the class, “I like that you have a lot of freedom to build what you want. You get to talk with each other, work in groups or on your own. You get to be creative and learn new things.”