Neal Bascomb - The New Cool: A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts

More Praise for THE NEW COOL

Illuminating in its portrait of how the next generation will do its problem solving If a space alien passing through the solar system stopped at a bookstore for some reading material before the next jump to hyperdrive, what hed buy would be The New Cool by Neal Bascomb.

Gregg Easterbrook, author of Sonic Boom and The Progress Paradox

I love this book. Neal Bascomb cuts through the arcane technical jargon of robotics to reveal an amazing world of smart high-schoolers with passions for math, science, engineering, and computers. The teacher who inspires them also inspires us. With kids like these, there is hope for the world after all.

Charles Petzold, author of Code

Thoroughly enjoyable!The New Cool is not just a fascinatingand dare I say, really coolstory, it also provides an important lesson. If America is ever going to fix its broken education system and reenergize the economy, were going to need more schools, teachers, and kids like those in this book.

P. W. Singer, author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century

The New Coolmasterfully involves the reader. Bascomb captures the essence of what it means to be immersed in a real-life engineering project.

Henry Petroski, author of The Evolution of Useful Things

Also by Neal Bascomb

Higher: A Historic Race to the Sky and the Making of a City

The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal,
and Less Than Four Minutes to Achieve It

Red Mutiny: Eleven Fateful Days on the Battleship Potemkin

Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and
a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the Worlds
Most Notorious Nazi

Copyright 2011 by 11th Street Productions

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

Ebook ISBN: 9780307588913

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To my girls, Charlotte and Julia:
Cool is what you make it.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

ARISTOTLE

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

MARK TWAIN

Societies get the best of what they celebrate.

DR. WOODIE FLOWERS

Amir Abo-Shaeer A thirty-seven-year-old physics teacher and head of the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy, he aims to revolutionize how America teaches its kids. His ragtag team of robotics rookies and their FIRST competition season will prove instrumental to the realization of his vision.

Stan Reifel An Internet entrepreneur and jack-of-all-trades engineer, he plays straight man to the intensely enthusiastic Amir. In the Bat Cave at his Santa Barbara home, the students spend long hours designing their robot.

Chase Buchanan With a gaunt, angular face and surferlike calm, he is the teams lead driver. Despite his learning disabilities, he has a genius for spatial relationships that shines through during the build season, particularly in assembling the robots drive system.

Angie Dai A quiet, retreating math savant and the daughter of two Chinese professors, she volunteered her petite frame to serve as a weight source for the teams drive-train prototype and acts as a key member of the electrical crew.

Max Garber He is one of the teams SolidSeven, a crew that uses computer-aided drafting software to design the robot. He focuses on the robots helix, a triumph of math and geometry, which delivers balls to the shooter.

Andrew Hsu A classically trained cellist with the body of a football player, he becomes a master of the lathe in the machine shop. He is also one of the two lead scouts at competitions.

Gabe Rives-Corbett Tae kwon do champion and theater-production guru, he is foremost an extraordinarily gifted computer programmer. Considered the teams best hope, Gabe is pushed to live up to these expectations during the season and, in the process, realizes something very important about his own future.

Luke Seale Six feet two inches tall, beanpole thin, with a penchant for wearing a beret, he designs the drive trains wheel modules. He is also the teams voice of optimism.

Stuart Sherwin Known on the team for his thick, curly hair that hangs down past his shoulders, he is a scouting captain and member of the SolidSeven, specifically responsible for designing the turreted shooter.

Anthony Turk The teams teddy bear, with the build to fit, Turk wants nothing more than to be the human shooter at competitions, especially since he never made the varsity basketball team. He is a fanatic Lakers fan.

Yidi Wang A tall, bubbly concert pianist, Yidi is a member of the shooter-mechanism crew and finds herself responsible for much of its prototyping. She is also the lead presenter to the judges at competitions.

Kevin Wojcik Earnest and one of the most reliable, hardworking members of the DPenguineers, he is one of the teams three programmers and also the copilot of the PenguinBot.

January 3, 2009: Kickoff Day The new game is revealed, and the forty-six-day race to build the ultimate robot begins.

February 17, 2009: Robot Ship-Date Deadline The FedEx truck arrives and the teams finished robot must be crated up and ready to be delivered to the first regional competition.

March 1214: Los Angeles Regional Competition: Long Beach Arena The DPenguineers compete against fifty-nine teams for the regional championship and a chance to earn a ticket to the FIRST Championship.

March 2628: Sacramento Regional Competition: The Pavilion, University of California, Davis The secondand lastshot the DPenguineers will have for regional victory and the opportunity to compete against the best of the best.

April 1618:FIRSTChampionship: Georgia Dome, Atlanta A total of 348 teams from the United States and a host of other countries come together in the fiercest robotics competition in the world. Will the DPenguineers be among these and earn a chance to prove themselves against the legends of FIRST?