We Provide STEM Education for Kids!
The Hour of Code is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in 180+ countries. Anyone, anywhere can organize an Hour of Code event. No experience needed. Ages 4 to 104.
On March 14, 2018, the first #hourofcode event was lead by Mr. Amir in Play2Learn Education Edgemont Community Classroom. There were over 30 kids involved in this one hour coding activities. We can see how kids love coding and learning programming.
The topic of today is the energy transformation study using the boat pulley model. The students first built a mimic boat pulley model, then they conducted the experiment to test the energy consumption for load lifting. The experiment also includes the energy efficiency calculations of load lifting for the boat pulley, which is derived using the useful energy divided by the total energy consumption. Energy efficiency is one of the most essential physical and engineering concepts. It’s the key to understand many modern industrial system designs.
The STEM behind this class is the energy transformation between the electrical and potential energy as well as the energy efficiency. The experiment involves some math that is beyond some students’ ability, thus we simplified based on their mathematical levels. All the students finished the model buildings. More importantly, they all finished the experiment section and conducted the energy efficiency calculations. They learned knowledge and enjoyed the class.
The model building of today is the Walker. The students built a big cricket (a legged robot) to learn the basic knowledge of mechanical balance and friction. The legged robot is comprised of four legs with a wheel at each end, it can walk with different leg lengths. The walk motions are power by one electrical motor. The motor axis kinetics are transferred by a worm gear, and then to the legs. The STEM information behind this section is the basic mechanical mechanism and concepts including a worm gear, static friction and geometrical balance of machines. All students finished the model and conducted tests by changing the legs’ length to compare the walking speed and balance.
The students had a lot of fun after finishing the model building and lab tests. They used their robot as battle robots to compete with each other. Even though we are still trying to teach the students more STEM, it works better if we can teach them with fun.
This class went extremely well. The kids understood the Balance and the concepts we were working with very quickly. The in-class assignments were also done with relative ease. The concepts included mass, simple dynamics, and weight shift. Next week we will be working on a new project that is going to be slightly more complex than the previous week, as the concepts are supposed to build on each other until the end of the semester.
