Spotlight - Student: Wendy Sun's

By Rachel Hahn

The chapel has been infiltrated. An imposing creature asserts a territorial claim in front of the crowd of girls who have gathered for this part of their daily routine. Its transparent exoskeleton reveals an intricate internal structure of metal and mechanics. This beast, as large as a coffee table, can lift and twist and roll.

“Oh my gosh,” thinks Wendy Sun, “it’s a robot!”

Wendy, a Grade 9 student in the crowd, has never seen anything like this. The makers of this machine are a group of students from another high school who have come to BSS to show and share about robotics teams and competitions.

The opportunity to join BSS’s own team is presented to the crowd, and Wendy, in awe of the great gadget before her, made a decision in an instant: “I’ve never done this before and it looks so interesting... I’m definitely going to join.”

Wendy loves a challenge.

“When I was at my old school I thought maybe a challenge would be nice for me, so that’s why I decided to move to BSS because lots of people said it was challenging.”

Born in Beijing, China, and raised in the GTA, Wendy is an only child with lots of pseudo siblings. Since attending BSS in the seventh grade, Wendy has been a boarding student and describes her floormates as her family. “We’re all sisters in a way because we live in boarding,” she explains, adding it can get competitive during House games, but it always remains friendly.

Eighty-four girls live in boarding with Wendy. Many girls are from foreign countries, including Wendy’s two roommates: Min Jung Choi from South Korea and Dolma Tsering Lama from Nepal.

Boarding at BSS has been a great experience for Wendy. Apart from being surrounded by friends from many diverse cultural backgrounds, Wendy doesn’t have to worry when her robotics meetings run late into the evening, which they tend to do, and she can visit her mother on weekends.

This isn’t the first time BSS has had a robotics team. Several years ago there was a joint team in partnership with Upper Canada College, but interest petered out over time and the team was disbanded. Science teacher Robert Steadman brought the team back to life this past school year when he partneredwith the University of Toronto’s engineering department. U of T, keen to support girls
in the sciences, provided student mentors involved in robotics to guide the team. Mr. Steadman was joined by fellow science  colleague Fraser Landry and science department head Sarah Dwyer as teacher advisors.

It was January when a robot entered Chapel, and within a short time a team of 14 girls gathered together, anxious to get their hands on some technology. Wendy was, like all the girls, extremely eager to get started. After she joined Wendy really began to see how amazing science is and how much she wanted to pursue it.

Ms. Dwyer got to know Wendy through the robotics team. She was impressed by her ability to work side by side with the other team members, the majority of which are Grade 11 students.

“That’s what most teachers hope to see walk through the door,” Ms. Dwyer says of Wendy and her insatiable curiosity. “[Wendy’s] a keen, natural scientist.”

The robotics team decided to participate in the FIRST competition. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an international organization that holds science competitions for elementary and high school students. FIRST supplies every registered team with what they call the robovation kit. The kit is a standardized accumulation of motors, batteries, control boards and other useful robot-building gadgets.

Each year FIRST announces a new challenge that the robots must be designed to face. At competitions the robots that complete the challenges most efficiently win.

This year the nemesis was the spider. Twice as tall as most students, with metallic protruding arms and green light sensors for guides, the spider is a monstrous ring toss of sorts. Each robot must be able to put infl atable tubes on the protruding arms. It may seem easy, but with varying arm heights and sensitivity to being bumped, the spider is a finicky creature and a formidable adversary.

Many school teams begin preparing in September for the regional qualifiers. The ultimate achievement for a team is reaching the international championship in Atlanta, Georgia. With their late January start, the BSS robotics team decided to set themselves reasonable goals, the most important of which was to achieve agility and quick mobility. Still, Wendy and her teammates met after school on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays for at least three hours. Creating even the simplest robot takes an incredible amount of people hours.

Wendy delved in as the rules specialist for the team, and, with pages of FIRST robotics rules, it’s an important role. Ms. Dwyer was “in awe of [Wendy’s] ability to step up to the plate.” Though labeled rules specialist, Wendy would fill in wherever she was needed.

The commitment of the team was intense. Over the three months of researching, designing and building, a metal framed, plexiglass covered, rolling robot emerged. Every team member developed advanced science skills. For Wendy it became more than just learning, it became a passion. She described the circuits that flow electricity to specific parts of the robot as enthusiastically and eloquently as a cardiologist describes arteries delivering blood to the body.

The robotics team wasn’t ready to compete this year, so instead they observed the regional competition. Next year, in September, the building will begin anew and they will attend the regional as competitors. Wendy is heading up the initiative to build an obstacle course for the team’s robot. The plan is to show off the machine at BSS’s design and technology exhibition. Anyone who is up to the challenge will be able to use the double joystick control mechanism to guide the robot through.

Until the robotics team commences next September, Wendy plans to take science courses throughout the summer. She can’t help but smile when she talks physics, biology and chemistry. “Science is around us everywhere and I just think ‘oh how does that work?’ and in science you find out.”


Posted January 24, 2008 at 12:04pm






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