Great story in the latest Wired Magazine about four undocumented highschool kids in Phoenix on a shoe-string budget who won the national underwater bot championship beating teams from top universities, including MIT.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.04/robot.html?pg=1&topic(none)&topic_set
(none)
The Carl Hayden teammates tried to hide their nervousness, but they were intimidated. Lorenzo had never seen so many white people in one place. He was also new to the ocean. He had seen it for the first time several months earlier on a school trip to San Diego. It still unnerved him to see so much water. He said it was "incredifying" - incredible and terrifying at the same time.
Even though Lorenzo had never heard of MIT, the team from Cambridge scared him, too. There were 12 of them - six ocean-engineering students, four mechanical engineers, and two computer science majors. Their robot was small, densely packed, and had a large ExxonMobil sticker emblazoned on the side. The largest corporation in the US had kicked in $5,000. Other donations brought the MIT team's total budget to $11,000.
As Luis hoisted Stinky to the edge of the practice side of the pool, Cristian heard repressed snickering. It didn't give him a good feeling. He was proud of his robot, but he could see that it looked like a Geo Metro compared with the Lexuses and BMWs around the pool. He had thought that Lorenzo's paint job was nice. Now it just looked clownish.
Things got worse when Luis lowered Stinky into the water. They noticed that the controls worked only intermittently. When they brought Stinky back onto the pool deck, there were a few drops of water in the waterproof briefcase that housed the control system. The case must have warped on the trip from Arizona in the back of Ledge's truck. If the water had touched any of the controls, the system would have shorted out and simply stopped working. Cristian knew that they were faced with two serious problems: bad wiring and a leak.
Oscar sketched out the situation. They'd have to resolder every wire going into the main controller in the next 12 hours. And they would either have to fix the leak or find something absorbent to keep moisture away from the onboard circuitry.
An image from television flashed through Lorenzo's mind. "Absorbent?" he asked. "Like a tampon?"
The Ralph's grocery store near the UCSB campus is done up to look like a hacienda, complete with a red tile roof, glaringly white walls, and freshly planted palms. The guys dropped Lorenzo off in front. It was his bright idea, after all. He wandered past the organic produce section, trying to build up his courage. He passed an elderly lady examining eggplant - he was too embarrassed to ask her. Next, he saw a young woman in jeans shopping for shampoo.
"Excuse me, madam," he began. He wasn't used to approaching women, let alone well-dressed white women. He saw apprehension flash across her face. Maybe she thought he was trying to sell magazines or candy bars, but he steeled himself. He explained that he was building a robot for an underwater contest, and it was leaking. He wanted to soak up the water with tampons but didn't know which ones to buy. "Could you help me buy the most best tampons?"
The woman broke into a big smile and led him to feminine hygiene. She handed him a box of O.B. ultra-absorbency. "These don't have an applicator, so they'll be easier to fit inside your robot," she said. He stared at the ground, mumbled his thanks, and headed quickly for the checkout.
"I hope you win," she called out, laughing.,
Read the rest its great.
There is a snag however. As undocumented immigrants, they are struggling and can't get to college.
Thanks to bitch PhD (http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/) for the link