{"id":397,"date":"2012-04-13T15:03:23","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T15:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=397"},"modified":"2012-04-13T15:15:28","modified_gmt":"2012-04-13T15:15:28","slug":"dragster-design-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=397","title":{"rendered":"Dragster Design, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had an extended sixth grade class today.\u00a0 Students were challenged to design and build the fastest robot car they could.\u00a0 Last week, the measured the velocity of the standard robot car built from the LEGO directions.\u00a0 Those went about 1 foot\/second at 75% power and about 1.25 ft\/sec at 100% power.\u00a0 We discussed ways to make faster cars especially since we can’t get a faster motor. Ideas they had were to make lighter, to change the tire size, and to use gears.\u00a0 The latter had to be strongly emphasized by me and reviewed.\u00a0 This class has only 2 years of robotics experience and did not experience gears and gear ratios like the current kids coming up.\u00a0 I hope this will not need as much direct instruction in future years.<\/p>\n

I was excited to give them the LEGO NXT Resource Kits this year, which have tons of extra parts including many interesting gears, tires, and wheels.\u00a0 There was a lot of rebuilding, which is normal, as kids discovered how to build a car without directions.\u00a0 Many teams made cool cars but did not really pay enough attention to the goal, to make a faster<\/strong> car.\u00a0 Some thought a bigger wheel would make the car go faster.\u00a0 I’m not sure but I think it’s the same if the speed of the motor is the same.\u00a0 Smaller wheels will turn faster but also not cover as much ground. \u00a0\u00a0 You can make a faster car by having the motor drive a large gear, which then drives a smaller gear, which then drives the wheel.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Two teams were able to have a testable prototype today.\u00a0 The first car went at 1.43 ft\/second and did NOT use gears to make the car faster.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The second team successfully used gears to increase the speed.\u00a0 Their car is called Lightning.\u00a0 The team was so proud when I announced to the class that they now held the speed record of 2.5 feet\/second!\u00a0 It really booked right along.\u00a0 Made me feel really good to see them so happy.\u00a0 I was also pleased that I seemed to have finally gotten the open-ended challenge for grade 6 right.\u00a0 The one I had last year had some problems (too hard, took too long).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Can’t wait to see what next week will bring!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We had an extended sixth grade class today.\u00a0 Students were challenged to design and build the fastest robot car they could.\u00a0 Last week, the measured the velocity of the standard robot car built from the LEGO directions.\u00a0 Those went about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robotics","category-teaching","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"\nDragster Design, Part 1 - Kids Engineer!<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/kidsengineer.com\/?p=397\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dragster Design, Part 1 - 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