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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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Communication ECA Phase 2 Class 4: Charge and Drop Dragster 20200129

Hello class! I hope you all enjoyed last class! If you recall we build a dragster! We put our motor and battery pack on a tower mount for the dragster car. We were able to push a button, of our design, raising the car to connect to the motor. Then we would turn on the motor charging up the car so when we let go of the button the car would drop and shoot off!!! This build involved lots of knowledge with gears.

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Communication ECA Phase 1 Class 4: Big Wheel Sweeper 20200122

Hello class! Hope you all enjoyed building the sweeper last week. You all did a great job with that build! We used gears to control and connect the sweeper module to the wheels so we would get movement as the vehicle moves. At the end I challenged and educated you all about how you can change your gears from 2 of the same size to a big and small gear to increase and decrease the speed of the sweeper. I’ll see you all soon!

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Communication ECA Phase 2 Class 3: Simple Machines 20200122

Hey guys! Hope you’re all enjoying your week! As im sure you remember last class was abit different from what we’re all used to! Instead of building on set we all built 3-5 different machines all with different configurations and purposes. This class is very essential because it takes all the technical learning we learn with our big machines in the past and it simplifies it so we can really look at the key components. Some of the sets we built included: a crane/fishing rod, an angled weight lifter and a gear crank. 

Everyone did really awesome in this class with exploring and experimenting with these models. See you guys soon for more lego fun!

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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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Communication ECA Phase 1 Class 2: Hammer Machine 20200115

Last class we built a hammer machine! This machine used a crank and camshaft to move the hammer up and down allowing us to push out nail down with minimum effort! Everyone did great  with so many moving pieces! Its really important though to make sure we’re checking that we have the right size piece so the build works properly. See you all soon for our next project!

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Communication ECA Phase 2 Class 2: Fan Powered Windmill 20200115

In our last phase 2 class we all worked on a windmill! I brought a fan into the class to power them! At the back was a rope attached to a weight and because of our complex gears cluster in the middle, the windmill was able to raise and lower the weight using just the fan! Everyone had alot of fun but there were some struggles. Its important to make sure we all ask for help if we get stuck!

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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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