Lexus Eco Challenge: Clark’s Robotics and Environmental GIS classes compete in the final round
STORY UPDATE: On March 3, the Enviros’ project on marine debris won first place in the final challenge. They won $15,000, 70% of which will be divided among team members and the remaining money will go to the school. They also previously won $10,000 for the air and and climate challenge, making a total of $25,000 dollars. The team has been working on the project for a year and plans to expand it and get other people involved.
On Jan. 27 Clark’s Robotics and Environmental GIS classes each submitted their final projects to the Lexus Eco Challenge. Through this competition, teams develop their own projects to help the environment for a grand prize of $30,000 that is distributed among the team’s members and the school.
Both teams were finalists in the land and water challenge and the air and climate challenge, the first two levels, and then progressed to the final challenge.
What’s great is that people around the country can replicate what we did and find out about the environment in their community. They could use the data that they got from the weather balloon to draw their own conclusion and help the environment in their own ways.
— Lulua Shamim
The Robotics class team consists of seven members who worked to build a weather balloon, which took pictures from the sky. The team launched the balloon in Deukmejian Park and and collected data.
Junior Cynthia Mirzaie’s role in the project was to analyze this data and make maps to figure out the location of fire-prone areas in Glendale and La Crescenta.
The team involved the community in its project by constructing a weather balloon kit. “What’s great is that people around the country can replicate what we did and find out about the environment in their community,” said junior Lulua Shamim. “They could use the data that they got from the weather balloon to draw their own conclusion and help the environment in their own ways.”
Online instructions on how to build the balloon kit were posted at Instructables.com. According to Shamim, within less than a week, these instructions gained over 1,000 views and 20 favorites.
The Environmental GIS class’ project focused on marine debris. Team members took their project to a global scale by leading a class of students in dissecting a bolus.
Bolus is the regurgitated material birds throw up after ingesting plastic and trash. Team members dissected a bolus and recorded everything they found inside, which ranged from plastics to the natural diet of the bird.
The team also created a public service announcement and posted it on YouTube. Members advertised their project through various means of social media and posters.
“We learned different methods on how we can communicate our project,” said senior Anna Hakopian. “We got involved with different organizations with the same motive.”
Senior Allen Navasardyan said, “The overall project was beneficial to me because we really enhanced our researching skills, which can be applied in the future.”
Although both projects were fairly successful, both teams faced several challenges throughout the process.
According to Shamim, the main challenge that the Robotics team members faced was finding adequate time to work on their projects since they are in build season. The Environmental GIS class faced several technical difficulties. During the team’s first run with the ROV, it ran out of battery and got stuck to kelp where a seal was playing with it said Hakopian. One of the teams’ members got seasick, one of the links on their PowerPoint wouldn’t work so they had to redo the whole thing, and their work even got deleted from their flashdrives.
Another challenge the Environmental GIS team faced was attracting students to their field trips. Many showed a lack of interest so they were left to work with a few, Navasardyan said.
As the teams anxiously await the results, judges are currently scoring both projects.
