Cottonwood Valley Charter School is taking part in the BEST Robotics 2009 "High Octane" competition. BEST Robotics is a competition held every year in which students design and build a robot to do a specific job based on the theme chosen for that year. Teams are to take the position of a company trying to sell their robot. Therefore, accompanying the building and designing is an oral presentation, research paper, a website, and other documentation specified in the rules section of this site. This year's competition, 2009 "High Octane", is themed on bio-fuels. Teams are to design and build a robot that can pick up energy, CO2, catalyst, and H2O (represented by racquet balls, tennis balls, tomato paste cans, and plastic air filled globes). In addition, the robot also has to be able to either press a button or activate a switch with an IR signal. These elements can be put together to create the compounds ethylene, benzene, naphtha, and isooctane. The compounds and elements are each worth a different number of points.