The Disaster Masters – a team comprised of eight 5th-grade boys from Hopkinson Elementary School in Rossmoor – placed first out of 54 teams for their project presentation at the First Lego League Championship held at LegoLand California on Dec. 7.
The First Lego League is a robotics program for 9 to 14 year olds designed to get children excited about science and technology.
The teams compete by programming an autonomous robot to score points on a thematic playing surface, and by creating an innovative solution to a problem as part of their project, all while being guided by the FLL Core Values.
The theme for the 2013 challenge was “Nature’s Fury” and the project portion of the competition required the teams to identify a natural disaster and then through research and creativity, develop an innovative solution to help others. The Disaster Masters focused on wildfires, and invented an entirely new product to help prevent wildfires caused by unattended campfires.
The Disaster Masters advanced to the FLL Championship after also taking first place for their project presentation at a qualifying tournament held in Irvine on Nov. 17. The team has been invited to submit their project to the national exhibition in January 2014.
The boys spent hundreds of hours on working on their project.
