Stanford Outreach Event

Shockwave Shows Off Some Mad Skills!

A Brief Summary

WHAT: Shockwave launched t-shirts into a crowd of excited Stanford Basketball Fans
WHEN: Saturday, February 3rd, 2018
WHERE: Stanford University in Stanford, CA

Team 254 Members Griffin Soule, Shruthik Musukula, Mubashir Hussain, and Jack Gnibus work together to prepare Shockwave before the game

As part of an eventful weekend, we participated in a successful outreach event at Stanford, CA. Due to the efforts of students on our outreach subteam, Team 254 students were excited to have the opportunity to present Shockwave at the Stanford Basketball Game, where Stanford played against the Oregon Ducks from the University of Oregon. During a timeout in the first half of the game, Team 254 students Yusuf Halabi, Shruthik Musukula, Jack Gnibus, Griffin Soule, and Mubashir Hussain worked together to operate Shockwave and launch several Stanford t-shirts into a crowd of approximately 8,000 people. We are extremely grateful to have such an opportunity and would love to support Stanford University in the future!

Shockwave launches t-shirts towards excited audience members

Discovery Day 2017

Event Summary

On November 11th, Team 254 appeared at the Bay Area Science Festival Discovery Day to demonstrate our 2017 season robot Misfire. At the event, we used a few game elements like wiffle balls, gears, and a makeshift wooden hopper to show over 2000 people the capabilities of our robot. In addition, we spoke about our experiences during 2017 FRC season and the challenges we faced. We collaborated with other FRC teams including Team 1868: The Space Cookies and Team 5026: The Iron Panthers to convey the message of FIRST and STEM. This event allowed us to spread our knowledge and experience to our community in the Bay Area.

Team 254 Members showcase Misfire to the audience

Our Experiences

Our experience at Discovery Day not only spread awareness for STEM within our community, but also made an impact on our team. Outreach leader, Yusuf Halabi stated, “My Discovery Day experience this year allowed me to take a new perspective into 254 and our role as an organization. When I first joined robotics as a freshman, I was under the impression that 254 was only good for creating robots. However, my experience at Discovery Day allowed me to realize that serving and supporting the community is just as important as building robots.” Similarly, Team 254 Operator, Themis Hadjiioannou said, “My favorite part of Discovery Day was seeing the joy on children’s’ faces when they saw Misfire shoot into the high boiler. Watching the light in their eyes flash as they observed what a robotics team was capable of struck a chord with me. I thought back to when I was a kid and was inspired by drones and robotics. Discovery Day made me proud to be a part of an organization that strives to bring this inspiration to kids around the world.” Overall, Discovery Day was an outstanding outreach event and we wish to continue making such a profound impact in our community!

Team 254 Driver, Justin Ramirez, helps load up fuel before Misfire demonstrates its shooter

USS Hornet Outreach Event

On Saturday, July 26, a few students and mentors demoed both our 2013 robot: Overkill and our T-shirt cannon: Shockwave at the USS Hornet Splashdown event. This event commemorated the 45th Anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing mission. The aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet (CVS-12) was the recovery ship for Apollo 11 and Apollo 12. Buzz Aldrin, the 2nd man to set foot on the moon was there and spoke about the importance of the Space Exploration program and how we need to try to get on Mars to promote the next wave of innovators.
The team mostly demoed and spoke about but there wasn’t enough room to shoot frisbees or t-shirts indoors.