Another good showing at a recent state final for a local high school team. Nevada Union’s Introduction to Design team finished in second place. The team, dubbed “Entropic Thunder”, featured two ninth-graders and one 11th grader. They were given what’s called a “blind” design brief. Coach, and instructor, Scott Mikal says they had just seven hours to come up with a digital prototype of a product for sale, with a value of under 100 dollars…

click to listen to Scott Mikal

Mikal says the product had to appeal to children. So they came up with a design for a three-wheeled rover with an integrated iPad….

click to listen to Scott Mikal

Mikal says the rover could map terrain, play “puppy”, develop climate profiles, and respond to its environment…all while teaching programming to its user. For finishing second, Mikal says the team got to split a-thousand dollars. The competitition was held at Folsom Lake College. NU was competing against 14 other teams, mostly from the Los Angeles/San Diego area, or the Bay Area.