Saturday, July 28, 2012

Week 4 Day 5: Last day of camp!

On our last day together, students and instructors worked tirelessly to add any final touches to our city. Although our city had been completed yesterday, the real challenge was to transfer all of the canvas, models and demonstrations downstairs to the display room. With the help of everybody, we were able to do this effortlessly.

When the clock stroked 5:00 pm, we opened our doors and welcomed everybody who came to see the fruits of our labor. The cities and demonstrations were a success. Our students were able to explain to our guests why our city is smart and how certain technologies, just like companion farming, work together to help the city be more efficient, convenient, clean and smart. Eon and Genesis were in charge of demonstrating the energy week's activities, and they did an excellent job showing guests how a solenoid generates electricity; a small scale model of how electricity is produced in our power plants.  As a college student and a camp instructor, I am very proud of all of our students today because they've all worked really hard to put the cities together, learned a lot and had fun in the meantime.
Breadboard hotels in Clearview city. On the demonstration tables, the breadboard buildings have LED lightbulbs connected in series to a wind turbine. 

Summer of Smart Cities summer 2012 staff, thank you all for making this possible. 

If knowledge and intelligence can be weighed on a nanoscale, parents, your kids had gained a bit of weight over the course of this program. On behalf of the staff at the Science of Smart Cities summer 2012 program, thank you for being a part of this experience, good bye.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Week 4 Day 4: Finalizing our cities

It's hard to believe that in less than 24 hours, I would've concluded my role as an instructor in the 2012 NYU Poly Science of Smart Cities summer program. It's been an incredible journey and these past four weeks were properly structured to allow our city to grow. After learning about energy in the first week, we came up with a plan to maximize the amount of electricity that can be generated from renewable sources. We decided to place wind turbines, solar panels, reservoirs, canals and a desalination plant in strategic locations throughout our city to make the most use out of our natural resources.

In the second week, the food and sustenance week, after seeing how easy it is to grow local food at the Added Value farm, we decided to place a farm in our city. This farm is at the epicenter of our city and it serves as a source of local food and as a drop off point for our city's compost. Reusing our city's organic wastes in the form of compost can and will prove beneficial to the quality of life of our city's inhabitants and to the general quality of our environment. We told our students, what our professors always tell us, as engineers we are always striving to work with nature not against it. We introduced the concepts of sustainability and waste management, and students understand that earth's resources are renewable as long as they are not consumed faster than they are generated.

Our city's layout became more clear in the third week after we learned about transportation. We designed our city's road network, highways, commuter railroads and the general layout of our city's infrastructures. In the fourth week, the communications week, we learned a lot about wireless communications. After our visit to Northrop Grumman, we saw the importance and benefits of having a advanced metering infrastructure and automatic vehicle locaters in a city. We decided to place a universal automatic metering system in our city's buildings and houses to help citizen's monitor their utility bill. This can help customers become more aware of their usage and even encourage them to use their utilities more efficiently.

Our city is oriented in the east-west direction, the turquoise strips make up our road network and the big green space on top is our farm. 


Today we finalized our cities, and with the productive contribution of everybody in our class, we were able to finish painting our cities, construct the underground subway network for our cities and worked on our presentations for tomorrow. After our last day of class tomorrow, there will be a celebration from 5:00 - 7:00 pm, that will give the student's families and everyone involved with SOSC to see the student's smart cities and to learn why it is smart. I am really excited about tomorrow and I look forward to meeting you and our students' families. We've all worked very hard on our cities and tomorrow is our time to shine, thank you for reading!

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Week 4 Day 3: Trip to Northrop Grumman

Today's trip to Northrop Grumman is "the best trip I've ever been on" as quoted by Mohaimanol. Although all of our trips have their own distinct value, being able to visit Northrop Grumman and learn about wireless communication technology, through the perspective of engineering professionals, is indeed a very rare and unique experience. Northrop Grumman is one of the world's top defense contractors, and their prestige is derived from their success in projects that range from designing state of the art military aircrafts to developing a secure wireless network for New York City emergency personnels. 

Our students were greeted at Northrop grumman with a giant television screen that displayed live footage from  cameras throughout the city, and by Monique, Steve, Janice and their wonderful coworkers. Our students were so engaged and curious about wireless technology that it took about 15 minutes to get through the first slide because they were asking a lot of questions. Later on in the day, we did an activity that simulated cellular reception by placing LED antennas throughout various locations in a lego city. The intensity of the light and overlaying of the lights on the surface represented the signal strength.

Steve from Northrop Grumman explaining to our students how an Emergency Call Box works

Monique (Second from left) and our judges (From Left) Omar Rosado, Doug Brown and Rhea Altamura, preparing to announce the results of the competition. 


After lunch, students were treated to a workshop that allowed Northrop engineers to introduce three sets of technology to them; Modems, Advanced Metering Infrastructure and Automatic Vehicle Locator. Students saw that many of these technologies are leading the way to make a city smarter and more efficiency. Finally, to end our day, we had a friendly competition amongst our group to see who can come up with an innovative and cost effective solution to an everyday problem. Vicente and his team suggested a cell phone application that notifies the user if a bus is late. He impressed me today with his incredible knowledge, abundant ideas and skillful leadership ability. He effectively asked his team members for their input and assigned them roles to be fulfilled during the presentation, good job Vicente. On behalf of my team, thank you Northrop Grumman for this extraordinary opportunity to explore science and technology through the perspective of your engineers. 

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Less than one week left for the first year of SoSC!

These past three weeks have been a wonderful experience. We have had three trips: two in Brooklyn and one Uptown Manhattan. One trip we took during food and sustenance week to an urban farm in Red Hook where we learned that farms can be created in all types of settings, even those that do not seem ideal. The farm we went to was built completely on top of asphalt, across the street from IKEA!

During transportation week, we were able to experience the New York Transit Museum just a few blocks from poly. The tour guides spoke about familiar concepts of energy generation, electrons, and circuits. The campers were thrilled when they could answer each and every question. I'm sure we impressed the guides as well. In addition, new concepts and ideas about the NYC subway system intrigued many campers.

Lastly, we went to the museum of natural history. There, students learned about the requirements for life and how those concepts can be applied on a larger scale, for example, a city. Now as the science of smart cities camp comes to a close, I can only hope that every single student is excited to become a scientist and/or engineer of the present and future.
Above: The Bionic A's strike a pose in an old NYC subway at the NYTM. 
Below: Vicente and James work with a volunteer from Deutsche bank as they put the final touches on their city. 


Monday, July 23, 2012

Week 4 Day 1: Wireless Communications

Last week I asked a student whether or not this camp was as they expected and her response was no because she did not expect to learn so much information, indeed! Part of NYU Poly's reputation is that we have a very rigorous curriculum, and those students who decide to stay after their first year will be in for a great academic adventure. We started off our last week of camp today by asking our students, "what did we learn in the first three weeks? and, how did we use what we learned to make our cities smarter?". This quick discussion paved the way for our posters. We started to work on our presentation posters today, one for each week, that illustrates the features that make our city smart. Since the roads in respect to the canvas is very narrow, very few details about the structure and layout of it can be put on the canvas. Therefore, these details will be put in the Week 3 Transportation poster.

(From left) Kayleen, Eon and Jelani drafting a layout of their city
In the second half of the day, we talked about Internet, WiFi and cellular technology. Everyone of our student uses the internet but none of them knew exactly what it is or how it worked. After Jim's careful guidance and mindful lecture, students left today knowing that the internet is a network of networks. It works because millions of servers and computers around the world act as passers, receivers and senders of information, as part of one giant global network. Students also left today knowing how to quantify a bit, a byte, a megabyte and understand why most media drives today are sold in gigabytes. Overall, today was a very interesting day, I along with the students learned a lot about the internet and various wireless communication technologies.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Week 3 Day 5 : A Journey to the AMNH

Our close up look at the space elevator
Jelani in orbit!
Getting 30 middle school students along with instructors into the subway showed to be a challenge as it started off the day. But, by 10 AM we had made it to the American Museum of Natural History and began our tour. Led by the fantastic Cynthia Toledo, principles we had discussed through each we came to light in the in respect to life and earth sciences. As we worked our way through the halls of biodiversity and the universe we looked at how the aspects of design that have allowed both biodiversity on this planet and the diversity of the universe can be applied to how we think about designing a smarter city. 40 minutes of Whoopi Goldberg later we garnered more knowledge of our universe and how it functions. We then took a close look at the earth and its properties. Scavenging to find information such as the benefits of living in close vicinity to volcanoes we took the hall of earth by storm. In conclusion we made our way the Beyond Planet Earth exhibit. There we could put together some of the lessons we learned at AMNH and in the classrooms, taking a close look at the possibility of extending civilization beyond our blue planet.


Week 3 Day 4: Active Collision Avoidance

What does adaptive cruise control, antilock brake systems and active collision avoidance all have in common? They're innovative technologies that helps cars travel safer, smarter and more efficiently. Students were introduced to these concepts today and were given the golden opportunity to add an active collision avoidance system to a R/C remote control car. The process was tedious and complex, however when everybody was done, students agreed that the final product was very rewarding and cool. 
Gabriel (left) and Rori (right), adding a breadboard, Arduino and Ultrasonic module to their R/C cars.



Dajah, Giovanni, Rori, Miya and Lesly (clockwise) engineering their city's road network

After the Active Collision Avoidance activity, students continued on their smart cities. Rori led the team in developing the city's road network. He, together with his team, decided where to place roundabouts, major roads and minor roads to help reduce congestion and improve air quality. Since cars only travel on the perimeter of a roundabout, he decided to place a green zone in the middle of the roundabout. We also started on the highway network today and painted in the different districts in our city. We did a lot of work today, great job team!


Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Week 3 Day 3: Trip to the NYC Transit Museum

We learned a lot about trains today; maglev (magnetic levitation) trains, bullet trains, freight trains, pneumatic trains and commuter trains. If we were to play a game of which train does not belong in the group, it would be the maglev train. Maglev trains are trains that are suspended a few inches away from the tracks through the use of electromagnetic theory. We learned after a brief discussion, that they are capable of reaching top speeds of about 500 km per hour, which is equivalent to 311 miles per hour. The average intercity train in the United States has a top speed of about 80 miles per hour. Without touching the rails, maglev trains has fewer energy loss due to friction and is therefore more efficient. In a smart city, it is favorable to move people into and out of the city as quick as possible and this is possible through the use of magnetic levitation. 

During a tour at the NYC transit museum, we learned about AC/DC power and the various components of a commuter train through an interactive activity. 


Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Week 3 Day 1: Introduction to Traffic Engineering

Today we welcomed our students to the start of our 3rd week here at SOSC and to the transportation week. In the first two weeks of the program, we learned about various topics related to the energy system, food network and sustenance of a smart city. Every major city in America has problems related to traffic congestions. To help our smart city reduce or even eliminate congestion, we started off the day by discussing problems with our transportation network, from the students' experiences.

 (Clockwise from left) Mekhyi, Kayleen, Mohaimanul and Genesis painting the natural elements of our  smart city.




Later on in the day, we talked about the different elements of a city road; sidewalk, car lanes, bike lanes, crosswalks etc. and how the positioning of these different elements can potentially save lives and increase bike ridership. Instead of having bike lanes between the car lanes and parked cars, some cities are putting bike lanes between the sidewalk and the parked cars, reducing the potential for car-bike collisions and various other accidents.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Week 2 Day 5: Painting our Smart City

Last Friday, we built our power generation systems and drafted a layout of our city. Today, we continued where we left off last week and started painting our city. After learning about various topics this week concerning "food and sustenance" of a smart city , the Elusive Silver Tigers decided to put a farm on the outskirts of our city. The farm serves a dual purpose; to produce local food and to serve as a  composting station, allowing city dwellers to reduce the amount of organic waste that gets sent to the landfill. 

Celine and her team discussing about the possibility of using robot arms to collect household trash

Miya and her team experimenting with wind turbines
Our city has wind turbines near the coast to serve as a tourist attraction and to take advantage of the sea breeze. We split the class into three teams; Food and sustenance, Water and Energy. Each group had specific tasks and representatives were chosen to share and draft their ideas on a dry erase board. Our class accomplished a lot today; we began to paint the natural terrain of the city, decided on a power generation and electric storage system, built a wind powered building and a lego water desalination plant. Today marks the end of our second week of camp and a successful first half of the program. Next week's theme will be transportation and I look forward to sharing the knowledge I've obtained from my "Introduction to Traffic Engineering" class.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Week 2 Day 4: Trip to Added Value Farms, Red Hook, Brooklyn

When we asked our students what they think of when they hear the word farm. They conceive big open fields in the countryside surrounded by green fields. When we brought them to Added Value farms today, not only did they learn that local, seasonal and organic foods are very close to home but also it is possible to grow crops on a concrete foundation. Added Value is a non-profit organization that operates a farm in an old baseball field. They invite members of the community to their farm to turn their organic wastes into compost and at the same time, purchase some organic fruits and vegetables for dinner. 

(left to right) Giovanni, Sophia and Vicente pulling out weeds from the farm

Growing crops on top of concrete in an old baseball field is adding value to the crops this community eats. 
Later on in the day, the farmers invited us to help them pull out weed from one of their fields. Although it was hard work, many of the students I talked to had a better appreciation for the hard work our farmers do. This trip gave students and instructors a rare opportunity to learn about farming. In addition, it also helped reinforce a lot of the content we learned this week; companion planting, irrigation, seasonal foods, water supply systems, etc. Thank you Added Value! 

Week 2, Day 2: Farming Culture

I felt the need to blog about Tuesday's activities because the students seemed to particularly enjoy them. My fellow counselors and I have received nothing but positive feedback regarding Tuesday's topics, as is the case with just about the entire SoSC curriculum!

We first discussed the concepts of urban farming, companion planting, and mono-culture. We learned about the advantages and disadvantages of each, watched a few short videos, and discussed possible solutions to farming in the confined space of an urban environment. Personally, I think Tuesday's discussions were among the most successful and engaging thus far; the kids, all actively participating, seemed to agree!

The students built their own vertical growing systems today called window farms. They planted zinnia, daisy, and sunflower seeds. The system is arranged vertically so that only the top planter is watered. The excess water from the top planter can trickle down to the soil in the planters below. Water and nutrients that are not absorbed collect in a reservoir below and will be pumped through again at the next interval. This reinforces the concepts of both water conservation and plant nutrition.

Howard (left) and I (right) assist Eon, Mekhgi, and Andrew as they use a cheesecloth and funnel to remove solid particles from the organic pesticide they made from onions, garlic, and red hot chili.
In order to combat harmful pests such as slugs, bugs, mites, and worms, the students made several different natural pesticides. They learned about the differences between organic and chemical pesticides, including the immense environmental and health benefits of using all-natural ingredients. Despite the smell of onions and garlic, the students enjoyed "getting their hands dirty" to make salt water, soap water, and "hot and spicy" natural pesticides.

Now, we are all patiently waiting for the seeds to germinate! This week's lessons thus far will transition nicely into our very first field trip. Today we are going to Added Value, an agricultural facility right here in Brooklyn. I can't wait to see what they have in store for us!

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Week 2 Day 3: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Today was filled with a wonderful blend of fun and learning. We started off the day learning about the importance of water, why film makers had coined it blue gold and the type of problems engineers have to think about when trying to secure freshwater for our communities. After learning that only 3% of all the water on earth are freshwater, Genesis asked how is it possible that a world can sustain itself with so little water. The answer was, 3% of a hundred might seem small but 3% of a trillion is a lot of water. However, the problem is real, the world is running out of fresh water and in our discussion today we talked about sustainability techniques, conservation techniques and technology that utilizes reverse osmosis to desalinate and turn ocean water into freshwater. It was a very engaging discussion today and students such as Dariela, Miya and Mekhgi shared their experiences with the class to further enhance our discussion.

Destiny from the Bionic A's, looking at a recycling chart to determine whether the object displayed in the front was recyclable. 

Science of Smart Cities group picture 

Later in the day, recycling experts from GrowNYC came to our camp and taught us why and how to recycle. Students learned that instead of sending all of our waste to the landfill and having to pay about $250 million a year to do it, recycling is better for the environment and can even generate income for the city. We were taught simple tips to decide whether an item is recyclable. For example, if a plastic container has a neck and the neck is smaller than its base, it can be recycled (a soda bottle can be recycled, a yogurt cup cannot). Today was a great learning experience for students and instructors, and most importantly we all had fun along the way. 

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

NYU-Poly's Practicing STEM Pros

One of the things that we have to offer our Science of Smart Cities students, and students around Brooklyn in NYU-Poly's STEM education programs, is the expertise of the University's faculty and students.  I want to acknowledge our colleague Dustyn Roberts, an accomplished engineer, Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Engineering, and author of Making Things Move (a book about how to make robots).  Dustyn researches how to make robotic devices more energy efficient by mimicking natural movements.  She talked with students about her research, and how energy will be used to land the latest Rover on its way to Mars.  Dustyn designed one of its most important scientific components, and needless to say students (and instructors!) were impressed.
 

Monday, July 9, 2012

Week 2 Day 1: Local, Organic, Whole, Seasonal Foods, What's the difference?

I had a great time delivering my presentations today because they touched base on issues and topics I feel very passionately about; Waste Management, Soil Engineering and Food. One of the reasons why I chose to study Civil Engineering is because I am curious to know what happens to our waste after the garbage man picks it up. We talked about the waste management process today and I shared some of the facts I've learned from my Intro to Environmental Engineering course to further enhance their understanding. We learned today that about 40% of our waste (by volume) is paper and 12% is plastic and various ways in which we can reduce, reuse and recycle. Current engineering innovations and technologies such as Biodigestors and Vermicomposting can help reuse our trash to produce biogas and compost. Finally, we learned about the different classifications of food. Dariela of the Elusive Silver Tigers said that Genetically Modified foods are tampered with to look better, kind of like how dogs are breed. Excellent analogy Dariela, I'm glad you are relating things you learned today with your experiences. 

Alan (left) and Mohaimanul (right) working as a team to determine the composition of their soil sample (% clay, sand and silt). Using these numbers they were able to determine the type of soil they had. 

Week 2 Day 1: I Require Sustenance

Alena and Dajah recognizing the levels of a soil sample
So far we have spent most of the day working on the basics of sustenance. As I write this Howard is talking on the subject of waste management. With gloves on hands earlier we tested our soil samples which had been prepared on Friday for both PH and compressability. Measuring the levels of soil we were able to determine where to place some locally collected soil on the chart of soil descriptors.

Soon we will be getting to start the food part of the week, focussing on Seasonal Foods today. With all this information our city building process will be able to continue as we start to lay the foundation for some of the buildings we have already designed.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Week 1 Day 5: Laying the foundation of our Smart City

Like any great structure, the construction of our Smart City began today with a careful consideration of the climate and the natural resources available in the region. Today's main idea was that, as engineers we are always striving to work with nature and not against it. To build a Smart City that emphasizes on sustainability as much as the quality of life of it's residents, we must harvest energy from renewable resources. The two groups had different climates in which their cities will be built in, my group's city is located along a coast, on a peninsula. The average temperature is constant throughout the year at about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. There are threats of high tide, flooding, hurricanes and at times strong winds. Given these conditions and various more, the Elusive Silver Tigers (Group B) were able to decide, as a team, to generate electricity from underwater turbines, solar panels and wind turbines. The solar panels will be placed on the roof of various buildings and the turbines near the coast, to provide maximum power and to attract tourists. Building got underway today and we are making very good progress.

Sophia Mercurio of the Ying Yang Dragons (group A) showed her students the power of the Sun, measuring the voltage output of a bunch of solar panels in Metrotech Commons. 

(clockwise) Me, Miya, Dayja, Celine and Eon talking about why it is smarter to live in a city as opposed to a farm. Celine mentioned that living in a farm costs more, transmitting and delivering electricity from the power plant to densely populated areas is less efficient and risks energy loss from long distance transmission. 

Here's to an energetic week!

After the first week of SoSC I am ending the week feeling impressed and motivated. All of the students are engaged and excited to be learning new scientific theories and ideas as well as participating in the activities our staff has prepared. After the first day, one of the "Bionic A's", Malik, told me that he learned that sometimes when you want "to make things work you have to trace back a few steps and change things". During the first day, the students were not only learning to create but to constantly improve - not only to engineer but to reverse engineer a robot! On the second day, we introduced the concept of "Mr. Electron" and illustrated a simplified concept of electrical flow. Later that day, the students also had a lecture about the sOccket, a soccer ball that can generate up to four hours of light. The students then began to think about different ways to generate energy. I must say that some of the students' original ideals such as pressure sensor sidewalks and turbines in sink and shower drains, truly blew my mind. Finally, we moved onto creating our city. The students were thrilled to finally begin the design of their smart city. Phillip and Ezron cited Newton's Laws of energy  as well as the byproducts produced due to energy production to make sure their city is created to the best of their ability. Below is a picture of some of the "Bionic A's" also know as "Team Lip Gloss" as we explored together the power generated by solar panels.


Thursday, July 5, 2012

Focussing on energy generation and storage today we are just about prepped to design some smart cities! Activity after activity building different storage and generation systems such as our hand made wind turbines, multitude of photovoltaeic cells, and hydro power storage facility led up to our guest giving the students the final touches they needed to complete their robot arms.   


Howard of the Elusive Silver Tigers lent some Robotics expertise to James and Malik 
Andrew drew a spot on diagram of our wind power generators today.  
We have an exciting day of design and construction ahead of us and I think both students and instructors are pumped, as well as prepared. Let's build some smart cities!

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Happy 4th of July!

What a hot one it was out there today! I missed all the campers, of course, but it was nice to have a day off in this sweltering heat. I hope everyone is staying cool and maybe watching the Macy's fireworks display.

Well, these first two days of camp have gotten me pretty excited for the days that are to come. The kids are all great; I can't wait to really get to know them in these next few weeks. I've only gotten brief glimpse into their minds but I can tell - they're really bright and this will make for a wonderful learning experience, for me too!

They've already built robot arms (which will be programmed to function later this week), lego carts, and several electrical circuits! They also came up with their own inventions to harness energy from everyday activities like riding a bicycle or running water in their homes. When asked for alternatives to fossil fuels, Rori suggested to implement "turbines in pipes, rain drainage and flood pipes that turn water that's moving into electricity." Great idea, Rori!

I'd like to thank Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation for sponsoring this awesome summer experience. We even had a representative visit to help out with the circuits yesterday. Special thanks to the parents for joining us for breakfast on Monday and to Abby for introducing the SOCCKET, the eco-friendly portable generator/soccer ball.

A Big Idea About Kinetic Energy

Abby Cohen of Uncharted Play came by Tuesday afternoon to discuss The Soccket. The Soccket is a soccer ball that converts the kinetic energy of play into electrical energy--enough to power an LED lamp for a few hours or charge a cell phone, a big idea intended to transform access to electricity in resource-poor communities in the developing world.  Here, Abby explains the engineering and design process that improved the Soccket's electricity generating gyroscope.


Building on the morning's activity creating circuits and learning the basics of electricity, and Abby's great talk, we broke into groups to brainstorm ideas and design the systems for smart cities to capture the kinetic energy expended by everyday urban living.



Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Week 1 Day 2





Jim demonstrating how to connect a circuit in series on a breadboard



Cindy showing Mohaimanul and Jelani how to assemble the circuit on the board


Today was a very interesting day, our students had a lot of physical activity today; they had the chance to swing their foils and played a game of soccer during the Soccket Ball presentation.

As for our academic agenda today, we learned a lot about Mr.Electron today and his lifestyle. We built him a city (circuit) to move in and tried very hard to get him to move, of course, Mr. Electron is very stubborn! I had a very great time today and as I get to know my campers more, they start to remind me more of when I was young and even, what I should've been when I was in Middle School.

Cindy, Jim thanks for being such great partners, and everybody at SOSC, I couldn't have asked for a better team. Happy Independence Day and I cant wait till Thursday.



Exceeding All Expectations

Just want to quickly extend my thanks to the Science of Smart Cities staff, instructors, families and students for what has been a terrific first day-and-a-half here on campus!  And want to extend special recognition to the support of the Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation for making it all happen.

This morning the Science of Smart Cities program was exploring circuits and the basics of electricity.  I thought Kayleen's notes here really showed her understanding and interest in the material.  Great job Kayleen!



Monday, July 2, 2012

First Day

Week 1 Day 1

Wow, what a day! Today was the first day of camp and I have to say, I was very impressed bout how much each student knows. The students learned about Newton's Laws of Motion and had an introduction to Robotics. Everybody was familiar with the three laws and I felt like my team and I further reinforced the concepts and identified its practicality in their lives. Newton's First Law is the reason why cars have seat belts, Newton's Second Law is the reason why we feel a thrust when we press on the gas pedal  in a car and Newton's Third Law is why we push backward to go forward. The students really enjoyed fencing and all of them had a genuine interest in science and technology. Genesis Ruiz from group B, the Elusive Silver Tigers, our group name, said that by the end of the camp she thinks she will be able to build things on her own, indeed! It was nice to see all the parents and understand their hopes and aspirations for their children. I look forward to tomorrow and the many excitements it entails.