AGENDA #3a(1)

 

October 16, 2007

 

The Honorable Kevin C. Foy, Mayor

The Honorable Mayor Pro Tem Bill Strom, Council Member

The Honorable Laurin Easthom, Council Member      

The Honorable Sally Greene, Council Member

The Honorable Ed Harrison, Council Member

The Honorable Cam Hill, Council Member

The Honorable Mark Kleinschmidt, Council Member

The Honorable Bill Thorpe, Council Member

The Honorable Jim Ward, Council Member

 

Subject: Citizens Petition to Chapel Hill Town Council, October 22, 2007 Council Meeting

 

 

Dear Mr. Mayor and Members of the Chapel Hill Town Council,

 

We are a team of Chapel Hill children ages 10-13 who are participating this year in the International Lego Mindstorms robotics competition called the “First Lego League;” this is our second year to compete as a team.

 

Background on the First Lego League and our Team:

 

First Lego League (FLL) a partnership between FIRST and the LEGO Group.  FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is a non-profit organization founded by inventor Dean Kamen (inventor of the Segway) in 1989 in order to develop ways to inspire students in engineering and technology fields. Dean Kamen and The LEGO Group’s Kjeld Kristiensen joined forces to create FLL that same year, a powerful program that for children ages 9 to 14 to help them to discover the fun in science and technology.  It ignites an enthusiasm for discovery, science, and technology in kids that participate.

 

So far, more than 90,000 children in 45 countries around the globe have participated in FLL - it is truly an international event. Information on the international FLL competition may be found at:

 

http://www.firstlegoleague.org/. Information on the US competition may be found at:

http://www.firstlegoleague.org/default.aspx?pid=70.

 

Each year FLL teams take on a challenge based on a current, real-world issue and participate in a state and national competition.  Each team is judged on two parts: a project report and a robotics trial in which each team must:

 

 

A short video on the FLL competition can be found at: http://www.usfirst.org/VideoPlayer.aspx?video=FLL.flv. A video of an excellent robot performance in the NH competition can be found at: http://server1.mayheminc.org/videos/Flying-Geeks-400-Semifinals.mov.

 

Our Chapel Hill team is participating in FLL for the second year in a row (our website is www.chapelhillrobotics.com).

 

We took home a first place trophy last year at the State competition for the excellence on our research project on last year’s project: Nanotechnology.  The Chapel Hill Herald did two articles on our team after the state tournament - the “Roses” article is attached to this letter.  All the members of last year’s team are active members on this year’s team.

 

This Year’s Project

 

This year’s project is the “Power Puzzle.” The project covers how our personal energy choices to heat our homes, fuel our cars, charge our cell phones, power our computers, etc. impact the environment, economy, and life around the globe.  The project is described in detail at: http://www.firstlegoleague.org/default.aspx?pid=29630. Successfully completing the Challenge Project is a very important part of the overall FLL competition because FLL is not just about building and competing with robots.

 

As part of this project our team must select a public building in our community and evaluate its energy use. We must then talk to experts and propose solutions to reduce consumption or move toward alternative energy use for the facility, and then share our results with our community. We unanimously agreed that the Chapel Hill Town Hall would absolutely be the best building to study for this project! 

 

Petition to the Council

 

Our team requests the opportunity to study a Town building for our project, and then share our findings with you at your November 19, 2007 meeting. To do this, we will perform a 2-hour energy audit of the building.

 

To prepare for this, we are working with a group of consulting engineers at Southern Energy Management of Raleigh (http://www.southernenergymanagement.com/ ) who are providing our team with Building Science and Energy Audit training on October 16th at no charge.

 

The North Carolina State Competition is on December 1st in Greensboro.

 

We respectfully petition the Town Council to act this evening to direct the Town Manager to work with our team and to schedule approximately 2 hours with the team during the last week of October or the first week of November and to permit us at that time to perform a simple energy audit on a Town building. We also request that the Town Manager schedule a brief introductory meeting with us before the day of our audit.

 

Our team will report back our findings and recommendations to you during your meeting on November 19th.

 

Thank you very much for your consideration of our petition.

 

Connor Bernstein, 13

Marcus Cooper, 10

Avery Dart, 11

Marlow Durbin, 11

Bobby McMahan, 13

James McMahan, 10

Jon Rosoff, 12

 

Coaches: Bob McMahan (923-6675)

Mike Durbin