My son's science fair project.

[fred67]

My son is, sadly, not "into" LEGO as much as I am. Now, I'm not a huge technics fan, but I do dabble and have a lot of technic parts for various reasons. Still, he often resorts to LEGO to do school projects (like a diorama of Isaac Newton, complete with a falling apple).

He was on an academic team (Odyssey of the Mind, for anyone that may have heard of it) and built a vehicle using mostly LEGO a couple of years ago. We had a lot of conversation about speed versus torque at that time, so when he had to do his science fair project this year, he wanted to demonstrate how the same motor can be used for different uses by changing the gearing. So... they haven't learned things like "gear ratios," or even "ratios" yet, so he's avoiding that terminology.

Anyhow, he had one vehicle with a simple configuration where one axle drove another; one with a 12 tooth gear, one with a 20, and he could simply swap them to either make it faster or have more torque.

That's one of my dogs inspecting the vehicle.

He ran several trials runs in each configuration, timing how long it took the car to travel a certain distance with variable amounts of weight. By the time he got to a three pound hand weight, the vehicle geared for speed wouldn't even move, but the vehicle geared for higher torque completed the task even with a five pound weight. I know we could reduce even more and probably pull a lot more weight, but it was just a simple experiment and worked really well, I think.

So I know this isn't something new and amazing to you technic'ers on Eurobricks, but it's just the kind of thing I like sharing about LEGO. I know FLL and others do far more, but I think it's pretty cool at his age level, and there's no FLL around here, nor any kind of LEGO club at his school.

Edited November 8, 2010 by fred67

[Arfman]

Very cool, I'm sure he will get "into" LEGO in a few years :)

[Tobbe Arnesson]

Cool!

I remember figuring out how different gears effect speed with the windmill in the 8020 Universal Set. I swapped the 24t and the 8t around.

Edited November 8, 2010 by Tobbe Arnesson

[Flare]

LOL, sounds very cool!

[General Magma]

Sounds cool, even though I'm not into technic.

And there we have Inspector Dog, huh?

~ General Magma

Edited November 8, 2010 by General Magma

[allanp]

I remember learning so much from lego technic. I remember when the science teacher broke out the dacta for quite a number of lessons and feeling quite wierd at already knowing more than he did about mechanics and how various gears, differencial gears, linkages, pneumatics and such all work. To solve mechanical problems (like a working gear box and lifting heavy weights) that he could not was literally childs play to me. I guess that's the difference between knowledge (what memorising a textbook gives you) and true understanding (what playing with technic gives you).

[fred67]

Thanks for the replies, guys. It's just nice getting back to basics and seeing kids learning while doing something ultimately very cool with LEGO.

[rjk1977]

I remember learning so much from lego technic. I remember when the science teacher broke out the dacta for quite a number of lessons and feeling quite wierd at already knowing more than he did about mechanics and how various gears, differencial gears, linkages, pneumatics and such all work. To solve mechanical problems (like a working gear box and lifting heavy weights) that he could not was literally childs play to me. I guess that's the difference between knowledge (what memorising a textbook gives you) and true understanding (what playing with technic gives you).

Thats what my son (8yrs) is doing right now

[CP5670]

These competitions are a fun way to combine Lego with academics. I did a project like this in elementary school (it was not for Odyssey of the Mind but something similar), and another one in high school comparing various Technic pneumatic compressor designs. The latter got some award at the county level. I think I still have the poster board somewhere. We only had the 9V ungeared and geared motors back then, which usually stalled long before the air tanks were filled to their maximum pressure. The Lego manometer we have today would have been useful as well. I think I just used a tire pressure gauge back then.

Lego is also used at the college undergrad level. Here is an example.