Whiz Kid: Jonathan Calhoun

Jonathan Calhoun, 17, is nothing if not busy. A Junior with a GPA of 3.8 at the , this New London native is on the school’s FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) robotics team, plays first trumpet in the school’s band and, as a Boy Scout with New London’s Troop 11, he’s also working on his final project to become an Eagle Scout.

What attracted you to robotics?  

I’m more of a hands-on kind of person than verbal. I always thought that engineering would be a fun thing to do for school and outside school and I’m taking a robotics class (right now we’re working on a program called CAD, it allows us to make three-D images on computers). Why not bring the fun outside the classroom?

I gather your robotics club will be competing in March. What's involved in that? Is it like battle bots where one robot fights another?

It’s not that much physical contact. Because we do it for schools they can’t allow chainsaws on robots! There’s two divisions of robotics club [smaller ZEX robots are made of plastic; larger, heavier FIRST robots are made of metal.] With ZEX, because it’s smaller, it picks up pretty light objects. FIRST robotics can lift up heavier pieces and carry them for longer range, overall a lot faster and stronger.

What was the challenge in your FIRST robotics competition?  

Last year, it was to pick up balls in the arena and try to toss them or place them on the opponent’s side of the field. We had to develop a way to pick up a ball, lift it up, and drop it over the other side. Our design from last year at the competition, it broke, and we had to redesign it. We had to skip some of our first competitions because we had to fix our robot. We lost--which makes us want to do even better this year! 

You’re also active in the school band. What drew you to the trumpet and how long have you been playing?

For six years. When I listened to Louis Armstrong, I just liked the jazz and the sound that comes from the trumpet. We’re a marching band [and the trumpet] is the glue that holds the whole piece of music together. We’re going to Virginia Beach soon to compete against other bands from all sorts of states.  Hopefully, we’ll get a good score. Last year, we went to Canada and out of six bands, we came first.

You’re working on becoming an Eagle Scout. What’s your final community service project going to be?

Mine is at --it’s the first church in New London and I really like it. I’m going to be fixing up the hallway and the kitchen, cleaning up bathrooms and fixing the stalls, painting the hallway and anything else that needs to get fixed. I’m going to be looking for donations from town-based stores like Sherwin Williams and see if they can donate paint and talking to electricians and even architects to see if they can instruct me as to what I can do to fix up the kitchen. I have to do this before my 18th birthday [on February 13], so I have a lot of stuff to do!