Day 15 (7/24/23): In the morning we were given another lecture by Professor Nick where he taught us more about CAD (this 3D building tool) and how to sketch items. Then we headed to the computer lab to practice sketching some shapes and creating some 3D objects using CAD, which was harder than it seemed. After lunch, we had an entire afternoon to work on our new project, building and racing a moving object without using motors or wheels (ex. using legs). Despite this challenge's apparent easiness, its difficulty was explained by Newton's third law of motion, which states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This means that every time you put something forward (ex. moving a leg forward), in order to pull it back, you would need to exert an equal force backward (meaning that you'd just not move). yooooo Physics 1 paid off. After class people went to various activities such as badminton, and a sunset tour at Gliderport (even though it was foggy to the point where you couldn't see anything lol  :(👌)

Day 16 (7/25/23): Today, we worked on our walking robot project! We worked on it half of our morning, but then, we went downstairs to our lecture classroom to discover a presentation with college students on their robotic projects and college application tips, especially for low income and first generation students. We also had a guest discovery lecture by Dr. Henrik Christensen, the head of Qualcomm Institute at UCSD. He talked to us about robots and autonomous vehicles. Afterwards, we visited Yogurt World, which had many great froyo flavors like matcha, chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and Thai tea! Meanwhile, others along with Cluster RA Jay gathered around after class to place down temporary tattoos on themselves!

Day 17 (7/26/23): As soon as we got to the lab, we continued working on our robots right away. Our teacher fellow Johnnie announced that the race would be held on Thursday, not Friday, which made us all panic. Fortunately, most groups were able to get at least a working prototype of their robot by the end of the day. Just before lunch, Professor Curt brought in some of his Engineers for Exploration interns to talk to us about their college experiences and work for E4E. Christopher Crutchfield, for example, had a rough start in high school due to his mental illness, but his journey through robotics was embraced in UCSD. Some of the projects they were working on included FishSense, a camera that can measure fish using lasers to determine ocean health, and Smartfin, a smart surfboard fin that collects data while surfing. After their introduction, we chatted with them some more about their interests and work, and they gave us some college advice. Our post-lunch lab time flew by as our cluster was hard at work tinkering with our mobile robots. When we walked back from class, some of us went on trips to Price Center and the bookstore. Our nightly programming activities included calisthenics, photography, karaoke, bracelet making, and an evening run with Jay.  

Day 18 (7/27/23):  We started off the morning with a lecture about Women in STEM in which many successful women shared their experiences and stuggles to become what they are today which was very inspiring. After we showed our final project presentations to Professor Curt and Nick while others were adding final touches to their walking robots.  After lunch, we took a cluster group photo in front of the Bear statue near the CSE building. In the afternoon, we had some more presentations and a little bit of lab time before the big competition began. Most of the robots were able to successfully complete. In the end, Group 3 consisting of Shin and Audrey had the best time of 36 seconds, followed by Andrew L and Vinay with a time of 42 seconds. We ended the day by cleaning up and singing Shin happy birthday.