High school robotics team builds a working fish ladder model for the state fair
Eleven students spent the summer modelling the dam on Cold Creek. Their sensors count every plastic fish that makes it up.
The Alder Valley High robotics team usually builds machines that throw balls. This year it built a river.
The team’s eight-foot model of the Cold Creek dam pumps 40 gallons a minute through a ladder of twelve pools. Infrared sensors at each step count the floating “fish” that make it to the top.
“We changed the step height four times,” said senior Noor Haddad, the team captain. “At nine inches almost nothing made it. At six, nearly everything did.”
The model took second place in the engineering division at the state fair. The team plans to show it at the irrigation district’s open house in March.