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I read the book called “The New Cool” by Neal Bascomb. It is about a FIRST robotics team. FIRST is an organization that was founded by Dean Kamen. FIRST holds an annual robot competition where teams and their robots fight on a field. They usually play a game that is simple, but it is a challenge to build the robot for the job. The book focuses on the Dos Pueblos High School’s engineering academy’s team. It tells about their journey to the competition in the season of 2009 which the game was called “Lunacy” where teams were to shoot objects into the other team’s trailer and score as many points as possible while on a very slippy surface. This was to simulate the surface of the moon.
The book took place in Santa Barbara, California, at the Dos Pueblos High School during the 2009 FRC season. There are also many different conflicts in this story. First, and the most obvious one, is the team vs. team conflict. The second one is the conflict amongst the team. The team is very diverse and the teammates have very different backgrounds. Third, is the conflict of the team leader, Amir Abo-Shaeer, and himself. Amir is constantly under pressure and he tries to get the team to work together. He also is making many decisions that he has to determine if they are the best for the team.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in the FRC competition and/or is a part of a team in the organization. It gets you thinking of some good ideas of how to work together. I myself am part of a FRC team and I highly enjoyed this book. It reminded me of how much fun I had building the robot.
