GHS senior hopes effort 'amuses' FIRST judges

January 12, 2006
Herald-Banner

By Jay Strickland
The Herald Banner

COMMERCE -- It all started with 5,000 unassembled pieces.  When it was finished it was a small scale amusement park with rides that actually move.

Kevin Morris, a senior at Greenville High School, spent a whole year putting the roller coaster, Ferris wheel and wave swinger together.  Now it's on display at the Northeast Texas Children's Museum in Commerce.

Morris is a member of the Greenville High School Robotics Team.  The organization the team competes through is called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).  One of the highest awards given at the competition, besides those for the mechanics of building a robot, is the Chairman's Award.

"The Chairman's Award is what you do to support technology and science in your community," Morris said.

The model amusement park will be Morris' entry in this year's contest.  He found the plans for the rides on the Internet and his robotics coach, Vanessa Pope, encouraged him to build it.  He went beyond what the plans called for, though.

"The plans were for the Ferris wheel and the little merry-go-round and then it had the roller coaster," he said.  "You could either build a roller coaster that had a lift and then a turn after it or one that had a drop and then just a turn to get right back.

"It didn't have a plan for a loop, but it had extra pieces so I designed the loop and a crossover.  I made it a little bit taller, too."

The kit comes with 5,100 pieces and when he got through, Morris had about 200 pieces left over, even with the additions.  He found some grass and trees from a model railroad set to complete the look.

Morris wants to go beyond just building models, he wants to become a mechanical engineer and design real roller coasters.

"There aren't very many job offerings in that field, so I'll have to work my way up to that," he said.

"I knew I wanted to be some kind of engineer since I was a little kid.  It's kind of strange for me when people tell me they don't know what they want to do because I've always known what I wanted to do with my life."

But it was his freshman year that it clicked and he knew he wanted to work on roller coasters.

The ironic part is, Morris was deathly afraid of roller coasters when he was young.

"Now I've gone across the country to ride them," he said.

Of course, when he rides a roller coaster he's looking at all the mechanics it took to build it.

"I've never, ever been scared on a roller coaster because I know everything about them," Morris said.  "You're more likely to die from having a toothpick in your mouth than you are on a roller coaster."

His favorite part of building the set was making the supports for the roller coaster.  Since he made it bigger than the plans, he had to figure out how the beams would hold it up.

"I learned this from one of the engineers out at L-3 who works with the Robotics Team," Morris said.  "He's a stress engineer and he said that stress is like water.  It flows the most direct path to the ground.  So I designed those the most efficient way I could."

The amusement park will become a permanent part of the museum's collection.

Team148.org  |  Robowranglers.com