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 afternoon was "Solar Car Races" using two motors and two solar panels so that the vehicles would go really fast against the competition!  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 counterweight. 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!

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