Innovations

BOXING: Since September, Annabelle has been involved with a FIRST® LEGO® League  team that meets at The Museum of Flight each Saturday.

The program includes robotics challenges, among other things, and the theme this year is  HYDRO DYNAMICSSM.  As part of the competition, per the organization's website, the groups have to "choose and solve a real-world problem in the Project. They will also build, test, and program an autonomous robot using LEGO® MINDSTORMS®technology to solve a set of missions in the Robot Game. Throughout their experience, teams will operate under the FIRST LEGO League signature set of Core Values, celebrating discovery, teamwork, and Gracious Professionalism®."

For their attempt at helping solve the problem of water waste, the team has come up with a prototype for a monthly subscription box, the AquaBox. Subscription boxes are kind of a thing right now, and so they thought having a monthly box featuring a water saving product would be a fun idea.

Annabelle and friends decided the first box would include a DROP-A Brick product. It's something you put in your toilet tank to reduce the amount of water used with each flush. It also includes a tablet to help you detect water leaks in your toilet.

I think their boxes are cute and compelling!

It will be fun watching them present their project to judges in the coming weeks. Also, if you want an AquaBox, let Annabelle know and she can hook you up. :) 

INVENTIVE: CJ spends a lot of time reading, and a lot of it online. I try to encourage him to get off screen more often, and so this weekend I handed him a Time magazine and asked him to read the cover story and then pick a couple of things from it to write about. 

Here's what he came up with. ... 

In the latest issue of Time Magazine, there is an article titled "The 25 Best Inventions of 2017". I picked two of them to write about, which are as follows:

In the "For the Future" section of the article, there is the Tesla Model 3, a car which is designed to bring electric automobiles into the mainstream. The Model 3 can go over 200 miles on a single charge. The car is very popular, apparently getting over 1800 orders every day, and regularly selling out. The article mentions that the Model 3 and its future successors are likely to be important in the fight against anthropogenic climate change.

Meanwhile, in the "For Play" section, there is the Nintendo Switch. The Switch is the latest console from Nintendo, a prominent video game console maker. The Switch functions as both a home and portable console, having a main unit (plugged into a dock at home, and carried by itself on the go). The Switch has been a commercial and critical success.

You can read the article here: http://time.com/5023212/best-inventions-of-2017/