Activ8
Learning Curve
Sparks Fly
Sparks Fly.What's life like after Bright Sparks? Sara Goessi talks to two previous winners.
Supreme award winner Matthew Richardson was just fi nishing Manurewa High School at the time and planning on going to Manukau Institute of Technology.
Matthew has won two Bright Sparks awards, the fi rst time in 2004 with Ezymow, a radio-controlled lawnmower, and again last year with his local positioning system, Navbot.
When we caught up with Matthew at the end of last year, he was 18 and one year into his Bachelor of Electronic Engineering at MIT, a four-and-a-half-year course.
At this stage, he has no defi nite plans as to what he'll do when he graduates. "I'd probably like to get some experience working in a New Zealand high-tech company and then possibly go overseas but I'm not too sure."
In the meantime, Matthew's enjoying studying.
"It's a great course. It's interesting and also challenging. I'd definitely recommend it." He doesn't have as much time now to work on his own inventions, but his experience making robots in the past has helped him with his studies.
"Some on the programme are only doing it on a theoretical basis. Having that practical experience makes a huge difference - just understanding the course content. And it's kind of nice when you're doing a paper and you can say, 'Oh, I've done that before. I remember that.' It makes a real difference."
Matthew says he's still working on his own projects but doesn't have as much time to do it as he used to. But he hopes to be able to come up with new inventions as part of his coursework.
He also lends his time mentoring on Bright Sparks' forum, which means keeping a general eye on posts, making sure the quality of the responses is good, and adding extra information if that's required.
And he's been called on by his former physics teacher at school to help one of her current students.
"Being called on for that is really nice - being able to give something back," Matthew says. "I remember when I fi rst joined Bright Sparks there were people who were a lot of help to me and so I know what it's like when you're not sure of something - it's quite helpful to have someone there."
ON TARGET
Finn Butler won second place in 2005 in Best Original Circuit and Best Original Computer Program for his Finger Drum Machine.
The year before, he won fi rst place in the Best Original Circuit for his Electronic Fencing Target. Finn (13), now in year 10 at Logan Park High School in Dunedin, didn't enter Bright Sparks last year - he doesn't have time for it now, he says, and needs to focus on his schoolwork, though he's been doing some programming in his spare time. He's also been working on commercialising his fencing target.
"Basically, it's a target, with LEDs that light up randomly on each specifi c section of the target," Finn says. "You have to hit it with the foil [the fencing sword].
It's really, really useful for target practice, because it's really annoying when you're fencing if you do tons of awesome stuff and then miss the opponent.
So precision is really important. You really need to be able to hit the person." With his parents and sister, Finn has set up a company to make the targets and was about to show them at a tournament in Wellington when actv8 talked to him.
"Quite a few people are interested," he says.
Links
brightsparks.org.nz
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