Day 4

Palo Alto High School

We started off the day by visiting Palo Alto High School, where we were guided around the robotics apartment.

We were introduced to their robotics competition, FRC and the students explained how their team - Paly, prepares for the competitions.

For example they explained how their team currently consists of around 80 people, however teams around the world at the finals have varied numbers of people, ranging from 10 to 120. We also watched a video of last year's robotics competition, where the aim of the game was to make the robots pick up balls and shoot them through a hoop, while overcoming obstacles along the way.

They explained how their robotics problem costs around $46,000, which they obtained through fundraising, and the hierarchy of the large team, which consists of team leaders and vice leaders in the different sections of the team - Design, Build, Business, Art, Programming, Web. Design is responsible for designing the robot, Build is responsible for building the actual robot, Art is responsible for banners, logos and promotion , Programming is for the programming of the robot, Web is responsible for research and Business is responsible for finance.

Google

We were seated in a conference room and received two talks, one from Chen Shay and another from Mike. Chen Shay gave us an introduction to Google and explained how Google has projects which are socially responsible.

For example, she explained to us how her brother was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and has to use his blood to track his glucose level. However, Google has started a project which involves contact lenses tracking glucose levels by the tears in the eyes so there is no longer a need to use blood.

Google also has a product which enables everyone everywhere to check their eyes for diabetes.

Another famous example is baby Teagan who was born with 1 lung and half a heart . The doctors didn't know what to do and sent her home waiting to die, however, her parents did not give up and researched and found an innovative doctor who was prepared to operate on her but he didn't have a working 3D printer in his work place and used google cardboard to see her heart and saved her life. Now baby Teagan is fine after the successful surgery.

Google's webpage is set to display the most popular sites at the top, however the most popular pages are not always the most accurate. Therefore, in medical cases, the information may not be accurate so Google workers collected information from hundreds of doctors so now if a user types in a disease, they will get a accurate report on the side of the results.

Google have also considered people in poorer or lower developed countries where there is no wifi so Google gave them a platform to search for a disease anywhere with Internet access to get a accurate report and present a Lite version for people with less good wifi connection to so less HTML and therefore requires less data.