Five Mathnasium Students Win 2019 International Zero Robotics Competition
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Years of after-school math learning paid off spectacularly for a team of five Massachusetts middle school students: They beat 16 other finalist teams to win the prestigious International Zero Robotics Competition. In total, 300 teams across the USA, Russia and Puerto Rico competed in the five-week summer STEM program for middle schoolers.
The Aug. 9 competition determined which team's code was best at controlling the small Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, and Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) aboard the International Space Station. The goal was to hook two SPHERES together while avoiding space debris and conserving resources, such as fuel.
The event was broadcast from the ISS and telecast live to the MIT Stata Center and 16 other locations across the world. NASA astronauts Andrew Morgan, Christina Koch and Aleksandar Skvortsov facilitated and provided live commentary while in microgravity.
Competition winners Arul Rhik Mazumdar, Kyle Klamka, Surabhi Sinha, Abhisar Anand and Shreyan Ronit Mazumder are longtime enrollees at the Mathnasium Learning Center of Acton/Concord. They attend several times per week after school and during summer, where they learn math, critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, and gain self-confidence. They have won a number of previous math awards with Mathnasium instructors as coaches.
Math is at the heart of every STEM subject, and the children's education at Mathnasium was instrumental in their coding and robotics skills.
Eighth-grader Kyle K. said, "The skills I learned at Mathnasium in problem-solving helped me figure out how to make the SPHERE navigate through the debris."
Seventh-grader Surabhi S. enjoyed putting mathematical theory into practice.
"Because I love geometry, the Zero Robotics competition was a great opportunity for me to apply coordinate geometry to imagine and solve a real-life problem."
A recording of the competition features the team's SPHERE in the four minutes between time code 1:25 and 1:29.
About Mathnasium
North America's leading, math-only supplemental education franchise, Mathnasium teaches math so that children understand it, master it, and love it. The results of 40+ years of hands-on instruction and research, the Mathnasium Method™ has transformed the lives of children in grades 2-12 since 2002. With more than 1,000 learning centers worldwide, Mathnasium is ranked #2 in Forbes' Best Franchises to Buy in America for 2019.
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SOURCE Mathnasium Learning Centers
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