Tag: PBP Center

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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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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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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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Is that a car moving by itself?

Nice to meet old friends and new people.  Today we learn what is conservation of energy.  They build hand generators to power up the car using energy generated by their hands.  The whole process is to change kinetic Energy into electric Energy and change it back to kinetic again.  It was a fun class and the learning environment is fantastic.  Jeff loves to help and chat his neighbors, Jeffery and Micheal are such good problem solver, and last but not least, Lucas has shown great improvement compare to last semester.  I am looking forward to have a great season with these guys.

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DRAG CAR

Welcome to a whole new season oof lego challenge.  New people and old friend are all having fun in the first class.  For the first day, we use different gear sets and wheels to build the fastest drag race car.  It is challengeable for their age but what surprise me is that they have sort it out by themselves.  Big shout out to Leo for complete the all car by himself.  That is a huge improvement for him.  I love how Chris is so active in the class to answering questions and listening to my instructions.  Arthur’s social skills is what makes him special.  He loves to have a chat with others and share his thoughts to us.  Joshua has incredible lego skills.  He finished building first and help others with their car.  Adrian is a lego MasterBuilder in his age.  He just heads down and gets the job down with little problems for himself.  He must have played tons of lego at his home.  Last but not least, Nicholas is the ultimate drag race champion today.  He finished First in all the race.  The reason he win all of it, it is that he has the larger gear on the motor axle and smaller gear on the wheel axle.  Which means when the gear turns, the wheel spins more times;  and he has the largest wheel on the back end with smallest in front.  That is how to make an ultimate drag race car.  

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fly wheely

It was a little bit of low energy to day.  The classroom is too quiet.  They probably think building a car with only gears is simple, But when I give them to try to fit a motor on the gear by themselves and told them that they can have some sort of reward if they can complete my task. Suddenly they are all energetic and even the kids haven’t finished yet is moving faster.  I will teach students more about how to follow the booklet on next week since that’s the main reason a lot of them can’t finish in time for experiments. Wish next class will have more excitement for them. 

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