December Blog Post

The Americas High School InvenTeam has been hard at work these past few months since learning about earning the grant awarded to us by the Lemelson-MIT foundation. From visiting a local university to brainstorming the next step in creating our machine to starting on prototypes.
Allow me to elaborate, The Americas High School robotics team learned about a grant being offered by Lemelson-MIT that went towards creating an invention project that makes a positive influence in the world. Our robotics team has always had a passion for wanting to make a difference and learning about the grant gave us an opportunity to do just that. After months of proposal work, we finally decided on what we wanted to do, create a machine that could help reduce the number of plastics in our environment. Now we have the opportunity to turn our dreams into reality and are not going to waste it.
Project Description Updates
Throughout the month of November, we spent time refining our project idea and coming up with extra goals to make the machine that much better. We visited New Mexico State University where we started looking into building prototypes and are now considering creating an app to companion the machine almost like a mini instruction manual. Our goal is to ultimately be able to recycle P.E.T. of various colors and sizes to help keep these commonly used plastics out of landfills.
Progress During the Last Month
After celebrating our selection for the grant, we started to divide tasks. There is a podcast in progress, prototypes being built (which can now crush water bottles), social media being run, and efforts to secure grants. We also decided on a name for the machine, EMMIT which stands for Enigma Mechanica MIT and have learned to work much better as a team. With school in full swing the team has been divided so meetings are usually done in subgroups where members work within their assigned tasks. In order to gain some funding we also volunteered to do concessions for a couple basketball games and presented at a local church. We also ordered the shirts for EurekaFest and decided on parts deemed necessary to order with the grant money to begin testing.
Goals for the Next Month
Now it’s December, time for holidays and giving back and we are abuzz with excitement for the extra time break may afford us. We are hoping to have a functioning shredder system and come up with a way to sense the different types of plastics. We plan to have everything reviewed by our sponsors, Mr. Nolasco and Ms. Mullins and move on to a secondary testing phase where we incorporate various types of sensors to meet the requirements of our machine. We also hope to get expert help with certain sensors that can differentiate plastics as it is a relatively new technology and as a result presents an added challenge to the project.