Day 1 :: June 8
Welcome to Day 1.
Today you'll meet your team, engineer a working robotic arm, pull hidden pigments apart with water, and create a tie-dye shirt you'll wear back here on Day 3 to celebrate the week.
For each question, walk to the corner of the room that matches your answer. Take about 30 seconds in each corner to introduce yourself and say why you picked it. Then we move on.
There are no wrong answers. Be honest, not strategic.
- Corner A — Engineering or Computer Science. Building, coding, fixing things.
- Corner B — Nursing or Biology. Helping people, studying life.
- Corner C — Business or Marketing. Running things, building brands.
- Corner D — Art, Education, or Social Work. Creating, teaching, working with people.
- Corner A — Hiking the trails at Stone State Park.
- Corner B — Cooling off in the pool or splash pad.
- Corner C — Catching a Sioux City Explorers ballgame.
- Corner D — Hanging at home — AC, snacks, screen time.
- Corner A — Sketch It. Plan it out on paper before you touch anything.
- Corner B — Build It. Grab materials and figure it out as you go.
- Corner C — Watch It. Look up how someone else did it, then try.
- Corner D — Break It. Try one small thing, see what fails, then improve.
Your hand has bones for support, joints for bending, and tendons that pull on those bones to move your fingers. Engineers copy this design when they build robot arms for nuclear plants, deep-sea drilling, and space stations.
Today you build one.
- Cardboard strips
- Brass fasteners or binder clips
- Craft sticks
- Drinking straws
- Tape
- String
- Rubber bands
- Bend your finger. Where does it bend — and why doesn't it bend in other places?
- When you pull a string attached to the end of a cardboard strip, what happens to the other end?
- Will your gripper be a hook, a pinch, or a scoop? Which fits the objects on your table?
This video shows how tendons make fingers move. Watch it, then start building.
- Cut cardboard into 3–4 sections. Connect them with brass fasteners or tape so they bend like joints — only in one direction.
- Tape short pieces of straw to one side of each section. These are your tendon guides.
- Thread string through the straws. Tape one end at the tip. Leave the other end hanging out the back — this is what you pull to move the arm.
- Build your gripper at the far end: hook, pinch, or scoop.
Run 1 — 60 seconds: Start the timer. Move as many objects as you can across the line to your cargo platform.
Redesign: Change your gripper — try a different shape or mechanism. Then run 60 seconds again.
Robotics engineers design surgical arms that operate inside the human body, prosthetic hands for people missing limbs, and robotic arms on the International Space Station. Every one of those arms uses the same bones-joints-tendons system you just built in cardboard and string.
Markers look like one color. They're not. Every marker ink is actually a mixture of several pigments blended together — and water can pull them apart.
The same thing is about to happen when you dye your shirt this afternoon. Today you'll see it happen on a coffee filter first.
- Coffee filters
- Washable markers (grab several colors)
- Water
- Dropper or small cup
- Paper towels
Pick 2–3 markers. Draw a thick ring of color about 1 inch from the center of your coffee filter. Press hard — you want a saturated band of color, not a faint line.
Place your filter flat on a paper towel. Use the dropper to place a few drops of water right in the center of the filter. Watch what happens as the water travels outward through your color bands.
- What colors did you see separate out from each marker?
- Which pigments traveled the farthest from the center?
- Did any color surprise you?
Try a second or third filter with different markers or a different pattern. You have time to experiment.
Look at your finished filter. The pigments that traveled farthest are the lightest molecules — they get carried by water more easily. Heavier pigments stay closer to where you drew.
The same thing happens in tie-dye: dye molecules move through wet fabric, and the folds, twists, and rubber bands create barriers that stop the dye at different points — producing the pattern.
Quick discussion at your table before lunch: Based on what you just saw, where do you think the most color will end up on your shirt — at the rubber bands, or in the open sections?
Tie-dye is chemistry — dye molecules bond permanently to cotton fibers through a chemical reaction — but it's also a design challenge. The pattern you get depends entirely on how you fold and bind the shirt before the dye goes on.
Important: You'll take your bagged shirt home tonight, rinse it tomorrow at home, and wear it back here on Day 3 for our group photo and final showcase.
Pick one folding technique:
Once your shirt is folded and banded, place it on a plastic bag at your station.
Your dye bottles are pre-filled — shake well before each use. Apply dye to each section of your folded shirt. Flip it over and apply dye to the back too — dye doesn't always soak all the way through.
- Saturate each section fully. Spots that don't get enough dye will stay white.
- You don't have to use every color. Fewer colors often produce cleaner results.
- Keep colors separated at the rubber bands to prevent muddy browns.
Slide your dyed shirt into a zip bag and seal it. Label the outside of the bag with your name using a marker.
- Take the shirt to a sink. Keep the rubber bands on.
- Rinse under cold water — bands still on — until the water starts to run clearer.
- Carefully remove the rubber bands.
- Rinse again until the water runs clear. Wring gently and hang to dry.
- Wear it to camp on Day 3! If it's not dry yet, that's okay — bring it anyway.