Today we used what we learned yesterday about construction and friction in
our projects. "Spin the Ghost"
was a learning experience where the campers learned the use of
gears, pulleys, crown gears, and gear boxes. After doing some activities to learn more about gears and pulleys,
we put everything together with a motorized vehicle. The "Solar
Cars" challenge allowed the students to explore our
main renewable energy source, the sun. We used solar panels to
power the cars. (Yes, even with partly cloudy skies, solar
energy powered our vehicles!) The vehicles the campers built used the solar panels to power the electric
motor. Solar panels generate only a small amount of power for our motor and
they require no programming. Knowing this, campers used gear and pulley
arrangements to make their vehicles go fast! Our last design challenge for
the morning was the "Trolley Car." Campers
designed a machine that traveled the length of a string suspended from the
columns in front of Alexander Hall. We have a camp full of future engineers who
are learning skills that help explore topics such as force, friction, balance,
center of gravity, and counter weight. We had a brief introduction to the
RCX brick and programming with
RoboLab to start the thinking process for
tomorrow's design tasks. Tomorrow, we will begin using the
RCX to
power our single motor vehicles, just what campers have been waiting for!
To see a larger size of any photograph, just click on it. Use the Back button on
your browser to return to this page. If you want to download a photograph and
save it on your own computer, first click on it to get the large size. Then
right click on the large size of the photograph and select Save Picture As.