Your locally-owned newspaper, serving North Bend and Snoqualmie, Washington
Baseball team has strong start Page 10
April 10, 2014
Competition hones skills of robotics team
C-SPAN comes to Mount Si
a real-world problem. The most recent theme was “Nature’s When you step into the Fury.” Team Hydrobot came up Rathnam house in Snoqualmie, with a solution for flooding. it’s clear Legos have a special sigThe teams are judged on nificance to the family. Complex three categories: the presentaLego structures in the shape of tion, the core values, and the dinosaurs or motorcycles adorn robot design. The first category the shelf-space. And there is a is based on the project idea table dedicated to Legos, but not -- in Team Hydrobot’s case, an for idle play. improved sandbag -- and the The mission table is used oral presentation of the idea for practice in the First Lego during the competition. The League, and the Rathnam house team must work together and is headquarpresent ters for the a project award-winboard outValley of the ‘bots ning Team lining their A series exploring the Hydrobot. solution. growth of robotics for Team The core Hydrobot values catyouth in the is an FLL egory is Snoqualmie Valley. team made based on up of five the values of kids from teamwork, the Valley. Hari Rathnam and problem solving, and time manManjesh Puram are in sixth agement. grade, Rahul Chaliparambil and But the show stopper is the Shyam Gandhi are in eighth robot. The robot is judged on grade, and Sanya Tamhane is in both design and performance fourth grade. All of them attend on the mission table. The robot Chief Kanim Middle School category is only one-third of the except Tamhane, who goes to FLL judging, but it is clearly the Endeavour Elementary. largest priority for the teams and Ram Rathnam, the team’s the competition. coach and father of 12-year-old The robot is a Lego Hari, first learned about FLL Mindstorm, a programmable more than five years ago with palm-sized brick computer that his older son, Vishnu. can be customized with Lego “At that time we had no idea pieces. The FLL robot has to what we were getting into,” Ram carry out tasks autonomously on said. “It is sports for your mind.” the mission table, a table covFLL is an international comered in a map produced by FLL. petition for youth interested in The robot is awarded points science, engineering and techfor various tasks, such as rescunology. Teams of 9 - 14 year ing a Lego vehicle from a danolds are given a theme and must See ROBOT, Page 2 provide a real-world solution to
By Sam Kenyon
By Greg Farrar
Mount Si High School student Josh Helzerman (from left), C-SPAN Education Content Specialist Josh Koning, students Emmitt Rudd and Dean Sydnor, and C-SPAN Marketing Representative Vanessa Torres, enjoy talking and touring inside the cable network’s bus April 4. Helzerman, Rudd and Sydnor created a documentary that won an honorable mention in C-SPAN’s National 2014 StudentCam Competition. Their entry, ‘Income Inequality: Dividing America,’ was shown at Mount Si during an awards assembly April 4. The trio was presented with $250 for their work. A demonstration truck from C-SPAN and Comcast visited the school and was open for tours. ‘Income Inequality: Dividing America,’ received one of 97 honorable mentions out of 2,355 video submissions to the 10th annual competition, which invites students from grades six through 12 to submit a five- to seven-minute documentary about a national policy issue. Students were asked to focus their videos on ‘What’s the most important issue the U. S. Congress should consider in 2014?’ The 150 winning videos may be viewed at www.studentcam.org/winners14.htm.
North Bend City Council to hear public input on continuing its marijuana moratorium The North Bend City Council will listen to public input and comments on its proposed renewal of a city-wide moratorium on marijuana inside city limits. The hearing begins at 7 p.m. April 15 at the
Meadowbrook could go the way of the Wildcats Wildcat Way could be the new street name for the section of Meadowbrook Way Southeast between Southeast North Bend Way and Southeast Reinig Road. A resolution to rename the street is scheduled to be voted on at the April 14 Snoqualmie City Council meeting. Heather Munden, who was elected to the Snoqualmie City
Mt. Si Senior Center, 411 Main Ave. S. The moratorium forbids the establishment of production facilities, medical dispensaries, licensing, and operation of collective gardens, retail outlets and processors within the city.
Council last November, sponsored the legislation. “I initially thought this resolution would pass without difficulty, but it has been over a year since the idea was presented to the planning commission,” said Munden, a former planning commission member. She added that there have been some mixed reviews about the honorary street name. If the measure passes, then the new Wildcat Way designa-
tion will officially be an honorary and secondary name for that section of Meadowbrook Way. The potential legislation was introduced by Munden when she was on the planning commission more than a year ago. The name change has official support from council member Munden, Mayor Matt Larson, and the school district. The resolution states that the name is warranted because
of the prominent role that the Mount Si Wildcats play in the community. Also, other prominent KingCo high schools have similar road names leading to their school. The resolution also states that the goal of the new name would be to increase the community spirit around Mount Si High School. Since the new name would be a secondary designation, like the famous “Edgar Martinez” drive in Seattle, mailing
addresses and the historical significance of Meadowbrook Way would not be affected.
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