Automotive Club
The Robert Land Academy automotive club recently completed rebuilding a 1972 Volkswagen Super Beetle, which was sold during our 2021 online auction.
The club will be working to rebuild another car beginning in 2021. The students learn common automotive skills such as changing a tire, oil changes and dent repairs as well as more complex tasks including window repair and installation, fuel cell installation, electrical work, structural welding and more.
Working in pairs, with time to discuss their work, seek advice or discuss alternative methods to complete a task, students also learn auto body skills such as welding, sanding, grinding, painting, surface preparation, bodywork, fabrication, and many others.
Music Club
The Music Club provides students the opportunity to experience and perform music in a group context. Students should possess a working knowledge of an instrument that can be used in a pop-rock setting.
Additionally, all students should be willing to participate in singing, while some will be able to specialize in this. Weekly activities include singing melodies and harmonies, appreciating various musical styles, arranging music for a band context, and performing both in solo and group contexts.
Performances may be given at various points in the year, particularly during the Annual Inspection.
RC Club
The RC club is an exhilarating 90 mins of Remote Control (RC) car racing and repairing! The cars are incredibly fast, reaching speeds of up to 40 KPH in just a couple of seconds. Each car comes equipped with its own repair kit and the boys are responsible for the upkeep of their car.
The students take turns to use the cars and blast their machines around the campus, they create games, time trials and challenges.
Students helped create their own track complete with jumps, banked turns and skid pans for a challenging miniature off-roading experience at high speed.
Robot Club
The Robot Club meets every Thursday to design, build and program lego robots. As a starter exercise students begin by building the base, track-driven model to which they can add sensors and actuators.
The first task is to build fighting, sumo robots that can be remotely controlled through a Bluetooth link to their iMac.
Designs are refined and improved as boys battle their robots against each other. Boys soon gain an intuitive understanding of concepts like mechanical advantage as they discover that gears can improve the torque of their flippers, while longer levers are harder to move. Boys are then free to develop their own robots, building on the experience they have gained.
This could be a programmed robot that uses a single light sensor to follow a line, or a multi-sensored robot that is able to navigate our robot maze autonomously, or even an autonomous fighting robot that can sense its opponent and react accordingly.