Breakaway Kicks It at the Museum of Discovery’s TINKERFEST 2019!

The Museum of Discovery hosts numerous public events annually, such as Spark! and Tinkerfest. Tinkerfest, held this past Saturday, is one of my favorite outreach events. Tinkerfest is a hands-on, family friendly event that takes over the entire museum and surrounding streets. There are more than forty interactive stations available to the public as well as the museum. Each activity engages children and adults and teaches visitors how everyday objects such as planes and computers work mechanically. Tinkerfest also provides the community-wide opportunity to explore the engineering and science behind everyday things. One of these annual stations was Breakaway.

At Tinkerfest, Breakaway members had two stations running at all times. We had the standard Robot Sumo and one other game that is different every year. This year, we had robot soccer. There are two colors (blue and red) as the opposing sides. The game starts with two small soccer balls in the middle. The object is to get two soccer balls into the goal on the contending side. Robot soccer was a big hit this year along with our annual Robot Sumo.

Robot soccer and sumo, however awesome they are, are not the reason TInkerfest is my favorite event. Tinkerfest is my favorite event because of the impact it makes on our local community. Most of the kids who came through the Museum of Discovery’s door were at our station. Most of them had probably never interacted with a LEGO Mindstorm robot. We showed them how to drive the robot, and they were allowed to make modifications to the base if they wanted to. You would not believe the creations people come up with in such a short period of time!

Tinkerfest is truly a community-based event. Every volunteer that participates strives to show each and every kid (and adult!) how STEM makes the world function better. They also demonstrate how much fun it can be to incorporate STEM into daily activities.

Thank you to our Sponsors!