Written by:
Sarah Smith, Class of 2021,
Anna Knickell, Class of 2023,
and Millie Castoldi, Class of 2023.
This month, Lakehill senior Sarah Smith was recognized as the robotics STEM hero. What is a STEM hero? The Robotics team creates projects, activities, and educational material to get Lower School students excited about STEM. This past summer, the Lakehill Bionicles robotics team began spotlighting various figures in STEM each week. These influential figures would include doctors, mathematicians, and inventors. Each hero highlighted a different field of work while also showcasing how diverse the people in the STEM world are.
The idea for STEM heroes originally came from Project Worldwide, an international coalition of over one hundred fifty first robotics teams. Each month, they release a theme to design an outreach project. The theme of September and October was sustainability. While the pieces of the robot often get reused and recycled each year, the materials for the field typically are placed in a storage closet. With sustainability in mind, the robotics team tried figuring out how to dispose of previous years robotics materials. That’s when Sarah went into action! She began turning the Mars Lander from the 2018-2019 Rover Ruckus season into a compost bin. She moved the field piece to her backyard where she disassembled it. Only an hour later, the field piece had been rebuilt into a functional compost bin. It even has handmade air holes. Sarah reaped the benefits of the compost bin almost immediately. Food and paper waste could be tossed into the compost bin instead of the trash. Not only was the robotics team able to recycle the field piece, but it was also remodeled into an environmentally helpful compost bin where it will be enjoyed for years to come.
Congratulations to Lakehill senior Sarah Smith, this week's STEM hero.