High-School Robotics Leader

There's a new IMAX movie coming to the flea science center about the big dreams of young engineers. A producer visited a science Festival this weekend at Petco Park to see how a local high school is ensuring all of its students can be tech savvy. As part of our first-person series a Junior at the school for entrepreneurship and technology told her story. I think that women and girls a lot of times feel like they are not as good at these types of things as boys are because a lot of times boys use acronyms and talk like they know more so that intimidates a lot of girls and women and makes them think they know more than I do. I will just keep doing what I'm comfortable with their God makes them afraid to try new things sometimes. I am not that way at all. My name is Grace Engleman and on the Captain of the ROARbots team. We met over the summer I was said let's do an all girl teen. Then I was the only person who had any experience that was female so they said be in charge. I was in charge of the team two years ago that was all freshman and I was the only girl the team. My cocaptain might not have joined if it was not an all girls team. I don't think any of the girls would have. For the competition it's called velocity vortex. We were supposed to launch these willful balls into what was called the center vortex, which was kind of like an upside down basketball hoop except the net was pieces of plastic sticking up. Eventually we got a mechanism that worked kind of sometimes not really during matches. We had two little wheels mounted on motors and they spun. We had to work out the ratio to get them to spin so they could launch the ball so how a pitching machine works. Every time before competition there in a row and we finished the competition so we want to take a break but we can't because we have another competition coming up so we have to add this and add that. The most recent competition we ended up in last place are pretty close to that. So we did not place fantastically, but everybody had fun at the competition. That is what's important. Everything that we use is built by engineers. Like the stadium we are in right now, the chairs, tables. I think it's important to know and have a introduction about how things are put together because I think that you can't really say you don't like to do something unless you've tried it. This particular challenge gives you the opportunity to learn how programming works and how to ask questions and participate, how to work out spatially how things fit together and what doesn't fit. That can be used even if you are like building a shelf to put books on or putting something together from IKEA and can't figure out the instructions and what you think piercing doesn't make sense to use the maybe you should put this here instead. It is valuable skills and if you are really into it then you could possibly pursue a career in something robotics related or just engineering and general. Grace Engleman , team captain, ROARbots . It opened this weekend at the science center. Still had sparking leadership in the workplace. It is 12:48 and you are listening to KPBS Midday Edition.