FLL Team 49050
Gram Gram Jones and the Drippy Stones

About The Team

We are a team of seven 5th through 8th graders from the Brillion, Chilton and Kiel area. We have fun as a team creating our skit to present, working on our robot and competing in FLL competitions.

The Unearthed Season Challenge

This year all FLL Challenge teams had to solve a problem for modern archeologists. All teams also had to build and code their robot and attachments before their first competition.

The Innovation Project-

This year our team started out with many ideas for our innovation project. We thought about a project on site looting or underwater archeology, until we found slime mold! We found out slime mold is used by scientists to solve mazes. Scientists in Tokyo even used it to map out their subway system. Archeologists don't always have correct predictions when they dig, this wastes hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, we came up with S.A.L.T., (the Slime mold Archeological Locating Tool) which uses slime mold to map lost ancient trade routes. Along those routes there could be trading hubs or carts could have dropped artifacts on the trail. S.A.L.T. also makes archeology more accessible

Experts we talked to:

Katherine Petrol, Assistant Director of Archeology- Parthenon Museum Nashville

While we were still deciding on our innovation project idea, we talked to Katie. She told us that one of the biggest problems in archeology is finding an accurate dig site, so, we started to create S.A.L.T. which solved this problem for archeologists.

Linda Williams Forest Health Specialist- Wisconsin DNR

When we talked to Linda, she told us that slime mold hates salt, so we used salt in our experiment to represent where mountains of deep valleys or rivers would be. She also showed us some slime mold photos from the woods she studied it in.

Dr. Anne Pringle Department Chair of Botany and Cecilia Stokes, PHD candidate- UW Madison

Next, we went on a field trip to UW Madison. They showed us their lab and their current biology projects, and we saw some of their pictures of slime mold they had grown in their lab and a video of pulsing slime mold.

Dr. Katherine Brannick, Research scientist- University of Minnesota

Katherine showed us some everyday tools that recreate lab equipment, so we built our own lab to test our slime mold project out of a greenhouse and other supplies. Kathrine also successfully ran our experiment in her professional lab following our guide.

Robot

We built our robot (Chicken Bot) so it had a square design so it could easily line up on the board without a jig. It's also designed so our attachments can attach anywhere on the robot.

Our Team's Attachments

Gram Gram Jones Attachments

Thank You Metko!

We appreciate you supporting our team and letting us use your space!

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