Samuel Danquah

FRU’R’U’RUR’F’RUR’U’R’FRF’ - RUR’U’R’FR2U’R’U’RUR’F’ Most people would consider the letters above as balderdash, but they are just two of the 30 algorithms needed to solve a Rubik’s cube. Many consider puzzles like the Rubik’s cube an endless maze of color matching faces. I have always enjoyed solving challenging problems, whether in puzzles or reality. At a young age, I started taking piano lessons, composing mellifluous symphonies with the help of my instructor. But a few months after reaching a crescendo in my musical prowess, my piano teacher left the country. Being in Nigeria at the time, it was extremely difficult finding another instructor. I was persistent in chasing my dreams, but I had tripped over reality and hit my head hard on this truth. Instead of surrendering, I was motivated to find alternatives – scavenging the Internet for piano lessons and geysers of paltry music schools. It was in this moment that I discovered my innate curiosity-driven and research-oriented identity. Moving to Ghana and experiencing a new culture paradigm with power outages at night, my curiosity took a twist to star gazing. The tapestry of the night sky was swirled with artistic strokes of midnight blues interspersed with gray tints from my balcony view. Noticing the bright twinkling stars, myriads of questions bubbled up on my mind’s canvas – what were they made of? What was out there? Reminiscing, the moment felt like watching the awe-inspiring Mona Lisa and wishing for answers from Leonardo Da Vinci. But in this scenario, I did not know the painter of the night sky and was wonderstruck by this gallery. But I knew where to commence my quest for answers and raced past everything in my path the next morning, to the Physics collection in my school’s library. Spending hours reading Space books about the cosmos, I was left with an insatiable taste to examine the fabric of the universe through the lens of Physics. My school's library was not enough to satisfy my appetite and soon I explored the biggest library of information, the internet. I came across a fascinating YouTube video on black holes with infinite gravity that could prevent light from escaping. One video led to another; days become months and my worldview embraced the gifts of Physics in nature – in my daily commute to school, I was oscillating in the bandwidths of Newton’s laws of mechanics. In my quest to know more about the vastness of space and the universe, I discovered a new world – spanning about 0.5 nanometers, the quantum world of atoms and ecstatic electrons gravitated towards my passion. I discovered the intriguing but inexpensive microcontroller, Arduino whiles surfing the internet, sailing past scenic destinations of various online coding courses in order to understand electrical circuiting and master various coding techniques from their modus operandi. Despite learning about amazing circuit designs to control home systems, and detect motion and light, I desperately craved for a pragmatic experience of building my own do-it-yourself projects. You can image how I felt when I first received an Arduino for a birthday present. This time like the painter of the sky, I was the artist painting a cloisonné of inventive electronics. My leisure hours were now filled with coding sessions for my Arduino projects – the simple blinking LED, spinning motor circuits, LED cube with random lighting patterns that autonomously lit a dark room. Diving deeper into the oceans of electronics, I ventured into obstacle avoiding robots built with Arduino. After months of critical analysis and problem-solving, I made my first obstacle avoiding robot : O.C.A.R. For weeks, I spent hours refining my invention with an added cliff detection feature that won a science fair award and local news publications. I took up my next challenge of building a quadcopter that was saddled with a whole new learning experience which got featured on the cover page story of Vista Teen magazine - “Teen Robot-Engineer”.