Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Informational event a success

CLARKSBURG, Maryland - January 21, 2009

On Thursday, January 15, members of the Coyote Inventors Club participated in an “open house” type event at Clarksburg High School to provide parents of incoming freshmen with an idea of what the club does. A small group of club members, along with the club sponsors, set up an informational display about the Inventors Club, which included both print and electronic media materials. The club website was on display throughout the evening, and brochures were also distributed to interested parents. In addition to the informational materials, the working prototype of the InvenTeam’s TorchCord was on display and available for parents to test. This event was a perfect opportunity for club members to practice their presentation skills, which will be useful during the presentations at the Smithsonian Museum of American History in March and on MIT’s campus in June.

Media Contact:
Justin Roth
Media & Public Relations Manager
Justin_Roth@cicmd.org

Hello InvenTeams,
January is National Mentoring Month. Tell us how a mentor has helped your InvenTeam through the grant cycle. Think about how you can recognize your mentor for his/her guidance on “Thank Your Mentor Day,” January 22, 2009.

One of my greatest mentors has been Kristin Joyce (above c.2004), the former communications officer for the Lemelson-MIT Program. Kristin supervised me, when I was the communications coordinator. Through Kristin I became familiar with The Associated Press Stylebook, an essential tool for writing for the media. Most of all, Kristin created a team environment, which empowered me to learn new things and made work a lot of fun.

Cheers,
Melissa Makofske, Lemelson-MIT Program communications officer

Hello and Happy New Year! from Whitewater High School in Fayetteville, GA.  We are busily working to take the right steps forward in the design and implementation of our ideas.  Hope all is going well with everyone else.

During the month of December we ran several tests on our current prototype, weather permitting: it was a very rainy month while we were in school. Fortunately, when we were out on vacation the weather was warm (70 degrees in December!).  A lot of research has been conducted and we are revising our prototype to efficiently increase the temperature inside of our dehydration chamber. In doing this, we painted the exterior flat black to capture the heat from the sunlight since our previous design employing silver—an attempt to reflect the infrared rays back into the path of the air—actually diverted the heat back into the atmosphere. For January we plan on making the project reach higher temperatures and have better airflow.  Some of the experiments we have arranged include continuing to test multiple angles of elevation for the intake chute, as well as constructing a more efficient chamber to capture the heat.  In light of the many roadblocks we faced ending the year, our focus for the month of January is to create our unit cheaply and quickly so that we don’t digress on hammering out the problems of an advanced design without getting the experiments completed.

New Year News

CLARKSBURG, Maryland - January 9, 2009

Happy New Year from the Clarksburg High School InvenTeam! With 2009 underway, we’re looking forward to both the presentation at the Smithsonian and the Odyssey at MIT during the summer. Now that we have returned from break, progress on the TorchCord has resumed. In December, the Public Relations team began contacting various companies about donations of products for the project. It is now following up with these companies. At this point, we are experimenting with the various product samples to select the most compatible ones. Our working prototype is being adjusted based on our findings. We plan to continue making progress throughout the Winter and Spring seasons. We are confident that through teamwork, we will meet our project deadlines. We are continuing to promote awareness of our organization and its goals, and hope to attract the attention of corporations and organizations within the technology and engineering fields.

We plan to publish regular press releases through the remainder of the school year.

Media Contact:
Justin Roth
Media & Public Relations Manager
Justin_Roth@cicmd.org