The First Lego League's challenge for this upcoming season is Body forward, and the theme is all about Bio- medical engineering. Just check out the new field table mat and all the medical imagery on it!
Of course the challenge detail will be released on September 1, 2010, but who can wait that long! As soon as I received the set, I rounded up my free child labor, and put them to work to quickly assemble all the model sets.
So let's take a quick look at all these fantastic models this year. Starting with the upper left corner, we have the ramp and syringe. It looks easy enough with a red crank shaft that when tapped can release the syringe that is on wheels! and my guess is the syringe need to be released and returned to the base to score some points.
Next we have the artery and stent and the mission must be to push the stent into the artery to hold the artery straight and open. The question is are they going to let us place the stent at the mouth of the artery, or are they going to make us bring it from base and deliver it into the artery.
Next we have a large bone broken in the middle. Since one side of it is mounted to a rotating base, my guess is you need to rotate the broken piece and set the broken bone aligned then cover it with a blue cast.
This is not going to be too easy here!
Below the small bones, there is the large Bone Bridge with a blue ball and the goal. The placement of the bridge looks very interesting, why the 6 degree angle, I'm not sure, but again, with 2 pieces to the bridge, does that mean we have to deliver the lower half, lock it with the little lock piece then spin the bridge to kick the ball into the goal?
On the lower right side of the mat is the tissue areas, which has a clever image of a tissue box and a large organ(as in musical organ) on the board. This model consists of five square pieces that has one side black and the other side white. With a quick two click you can turn the square around.So my guess is they are going to make us turn the square so that all of them will be black or white. Do you think they will throw in the twist, where the referee will set the pattern right before each round, so you don't even know which squares need to be turned?
At the far right end of the mat is the brain and the connected door. There are some interesting sticks on the side of the brain that looks like it needs to be pushed but it doesn't seem to be doing anything....or does it? The stick on the bottom end controls the door, so my guess is we need to push it to open the door, and then deliver those lovely little people through the doors?
Next to the door is the pressure tester, this is a puzzling one, I wonder if this one have anything to do with those two eye balls? if so, how are they related? There is a tiny little hole in the front of the pressure tester, do you think we need to stick something in there to trigger the pressure tester to drop? Hmmmmm... can't wait to find out if that is the case!
On the top of the mat, there is a medicine dispenser and container, it looks like we need to push the dispenser and drop the little lego pieces into the container. Since the container is not locked onto the mat, do you think that means we need to move the container back to the base to score some points?
To the left of the dispenser, we have a mechanical hand ready to grab onto the tray with handle sitting atop on the platform that straddles between the edge of the tables. Does that mean, the other table's platform will be adjacent to ours, and can we grab their handle and steal the points? Hmmm....interesting!
Next to the hands is the heart, and the pace maker and patch, my guess is they need to be delivered into the heart. That should be easy enough, right?
Check out this nice video that Jonathan from Tech Brick put together showing you how to put the pieces together in 120 seconds
Below the small bones, there is the large Bone Bridge with a blue ball and the goal. The placement of the bridge looks very interesting, why the 6 degree angle, I'm not sure, but again, with 2 pieces to the bridge, does that mean we have to deliver the lower half, lock it with the little lock piece then spin the bridge to kick the ball into the goal?
At the far right end of the mat is the brain and the connected door. There are some interesting sticks on the side of the brain that looks like it needs to be pushed but it doesn't seem to be doing anything....or does it? The stick on the bottom end controls the door, so my guess is we need to push it to open the door, and then deliver those lovely little people through the doors?
On the top of the mat, there is a medicine dispenser and container, it looks like we need to push the dispenser and drop the little lego pieces into the container. Since the container is not locked onto the mat, do you think that means we need to move the container back to the base to score some points?
