Take Apart Day
Thank you, Dr. Mike Norton, for you help and expertise.
FIRST LEGO League Kick Off minus one.

September 9, 2006
Members of the Barboursville FIRST LEGO Leagues team brought Nano Quest field set up.
Next week we will know what the Nano Quest challenges will be.
Then we will start building and programming robots.

Today we are taking apart stuff to see what is inside, such as a computer from 1982.
The dust inside was older than the person that got to take it apart!

Anything we could find, we took apart - even fast food toys and an archaic laptop computer.
There was something for everyone.

We weren't limited to taking apart computers from 1982.
Left: We had a newer model from 1995 to take apart as well.

Here is our champion that disassembled the 1982 computer holding the motherboard, which is bigger than his upper torso.
Also take note of the two decades of dust on it.

Left: Here we have our young assistant opening up a new set of tools for us to use.
Right: It took longer to disassemble that old laptop than he thought it would.

Here we have the inside of a keyboard just like the one you're using right now.
There's not much to it, but it certainly does a lot.

Left: One of our attendees is working on taking apart an old dot-matrix printer we had donated.
Right: This small bit of circuits was virtually the only thing inside a portable CD player.

That pesky motorized fast food toy just didn't want to come apart,
but our relentless crew wouldn't rest until they found out what was inside.

What's inside?  I don't know, but I think we're about to find out.

Left: Some things, such as the fast food toy, were able to be (partially) reassembled and still work!
Right: Some things weren't so fortunate, like our dear old 286 from 1982.

FLL 2006 Nano Quest is being set up at the RTI LEGO CITY.

Since Labor Day there has been some construction.

Back at Morrow Library Public Technology area,
people are hard at work making great finds.

While busy taking so many things apart, we made certain to keep an eye out for re-usable parts we could salvage.

It is hard to imagine that we will be hard at working putting together gears and motors in the next weeks.
Thank you, Dr. Mike Norton, for your help and expertise.
LEGO  Links of Linda Hamilton hamilton@marshall.edu
Jesse A Mullins, co-contributor