Residents of Picayune and Pearl River County have an opportunity to see the fruits of applied science and technology tomorrow at the Community Safe Room on the campus of Picayune Memorial High School.

CHAOS, the local robotics team entered in the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology robotics competition, will be there at 3 p.m. to unveil and demonstrate their latest robot.

This year, the robot must shoot medicine balls through a goal and then, in an alliance with another team, throw medicine balls over a girder to a team with which CHAOS has allied and then catch them when the balls are thrown back.

Yes, the team has adult advisers, called mentors, but the team’s members have to generate the ideas and build the robot.

They also have to raise money to buy some of the parts used in building the robot. The competition’s sponsors give the team a “kit” containing electric motors and some electronics, but the team must decide what else is needed to build the robot and secure it. They then have to build the robot and program it for the robot is also a computer.

In accomplishing these tasks, the student have to do what many working scientists and engineers routinely do: come up with an idea, find the money to bring the idea to fruition and then find more money to travel and demonstrate the idea to those with money to carry it beyond the prototype stage.

These students are this city’s, this county’s, this state’s, this nation’s future. Go watch them strut their stuff on Saturday. You will come away impressed with their abilities.