Burk Elementary’s Bobcat Robotics team earned 19th place of about 70 teams at the FIRST Lego League State Championship.

The Bobcats' work explored the effects of water pressure in deep-sea exploration.

The team qualified for the state championship out of a pool of 285 schools and clubs across Arizona.

The FIRST Lego League, a partnership between LEGO and the non-profit FIRST, engages students in grades 4-8 in hands-on learning experiences.

Each season presents a different theme, challenging teams in a robot game competition as well as an innovative project addressing a real-world problem related to the theme.

This year's theme focused on exploring the oceans.

Students spend multiple months researching potential problems and using design processes to come up with solutions in addition to learning how to code robots for competitions.

Each team then gets three attempts to score as many points as possible, with the top 70 teams moving on to the state championship.

For their project, the Burk students explored how deep a vessel could travel without imploding from the immense pressure at low ocean depths.

Through hours of research and communication with experts, the team learned about the challenges of deep-sea exploration and applied the engineering design process to develop a solution.

They discovered that a dome or circular shape, combined with specific metals, could strengthen a vessel's hull and protect its sensitive equipment.

"We loved the robotics league," a student said. "It was an awesome and fun experience. We learned how to code and build a robot, how pressure and pollution affect sea exploration, and how to work as a team.”  

Through this experience, the Bobcat Robotics team not only gained experience designing, coding and building robots using Legos — they also practiced skills that will help them in many areas of their lives.

By using Legos to build robots, students were tasked to solve complex problems and gain a deep understanding of various angles and equations, helping them in other school subjects like math. The team also practiced other life skills such as teamwork, collaboration, and conducting research.