Author: Marnoen Li

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simple machines

Hello everybody!  This week we started a whole new challenge, Simple Machine.  It was easy to build but to understander simple physics in it, is challenging.  For example, we build a lever but put the pivot point at different place to test out which point can we lift the easiest.  It was the most successful class of all because it does not matter what step we were on, but to understand how it works.  At the end of the class today, most of the students finished book 1 or close to finish book 1.  We will try to finish book 2 in the next class.  Hope all of you had fun.  

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simple machine book2

Hello everyone!  Welcome to the final day of simple machines.  This time, we got complex physics machines.  For example,  we use a simple triangle shaped pusher to lift heavy weight easier.  In real life, that is how we use tools to save our energy and time.  The main differences between human and animal is that we know how to use tools to make our life easier.  At the end of the class, we finished book2 and accomplished our goal.  Next week, we are going back to build complex lego toy.  Hope you guys have enjoyed.

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Sweeper

Hello everybody!  We are going to fight coronavirus with today’s master machinery, the sweeper!!!  It was easy to build but hard to make our sweeper more efficient.  The main focus us the gear combinations.  If we put a large gear on the motor axle and small gear on the sweep axle, that is the most efficient way.  But if we want the slowest sweep, we are going to have the large gear on the sweep axle and small gear on the motor axle.  As soon as we understand the math in it, we can have the best sweeper too sweep away all the virus.  

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pneumatics??

Hello everyone!  welcome to a whole new challenge of Pneumatic!  First thing first, what actually is that?  It is a machine that containing or operated by air or gas under pressure.  This week, we test out some different way to use pneumatics.  Use it to read pressure in kpa as one of the units to measure it.  This week is not like last few weeks.  This is more concept related.  Student just need to understand it and it has really little calculations in it.  We will keep exploring pneumatics in the following weeks and more fun to come.

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windmill

This week’s class, we introduce the conservation of energy.  We build a windmill which will transfer wind energy to rotational energy and use rotational energy to lift heavy blocks.  It just gives them an idea of use renewable energy to save slow down climate changes.  It was not super challenging to build the windmill but to line up the fans properly and have the block system on the right side caught them off guard.  Once they realized it, the experiment went smoothly, and big thank shut out to Daniel who was a fantastic helper that day.

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hammer time?

Hello everyone, welcome to another day of LEGO challenge.  It is the third class of the semester and good to see everyone showed up.  This week, we build a hammer.  Yes, we are going to knock something hard.  The building process is not hard, most of the students finished right after half of the class time and go on knocking.  For the experiment, we are going to test the friction on different gears.  First we test it out by hands and give it a rating of how much force we use to push an axle through it from 1-4.  Then we use our hammer to count how many time it takes to knock the axle through.  At this point, we have an idea of how much friction it has on each gears.  The second part of the experiment is to test does the angles, which is how much the hammer lift, effect the force to knock? This would be their homework and I’m willing to discuss about it on the following week. 

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why won’t the car move!!!

Hello class, welcome to another day of LEGO challenge.  Today, we introduce how to use those renewable energy in real life.  We connect a solar panel to a motor which we put on a car.  Then we shine the light on the panel to transform solar energy into kinetic energy.  As a result, the car should move, but sadly it does not happen in our class.  Lucas’s car were moving but after a few tests, it completely stops, no movement at all.  We try to see which side cause the problem, is it the panel break or the motor is down.  It turned out neither.  It was probably the light.  After the heartbreaking news, we go back to do some calculations which these formulas: s=d/t, d=st, t=d/s.   

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No Bricks No Problem

Sorry for arriving late.  This week we were introduced to Lego Digital Designer which we can build lego on our computer.  It is the same process as we follow the actual building steps.  Except finding the right brick is the challenge part, because we have access to all type of bricks on the computer.  We just need more time and be more patient.  On one hand, it will save parents a lot of money from buying all the bricks and instruction, the other hand is that kids can be more creative on free roam build without any instructions.  In the end, LDD is a helpful tool to save money and time and still have fun with Lego.  

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Is that heavy?

Hello, it is I.  Welcom to another class of physics.  This time we used battery to power up the energy display, then use the Joules to pull a heavy block off the ground.  There are few formulas that need to remeber. F=ma=mg, W=FD(D=distance), Effiency=W/energy used*100%.  These will help the kids to do their hoemwork but I also told them in class.  It was fairly an easy project to build but needed some critical thinking to finished the expriments.  Hope they have learned somthing and had fun with it.

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Beam Balance

I appreciate everyone for coming-in in such extrem weather.  This week, we worded on a much simpler project than last time.  Almost everyone finished theirs and had been working on the expriment.  They tried to have only one object on the left side to balance with1, 2, 0r 3 on the right side.  They first predict the positions and then test it out.  It was really nice to see they were eager to learn this.  

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