Lesson 1-3

Pulling

We skip for now the fourth project, D-Collaborating, because that would be our third hour with the same robot and the children are eager to build different models. Therefore I select the project Pulling for this lesson, which is really interesting for several reasons. They can experiment with a different mechanism to move the robot. They can use different surfaces and different wheels, and see how friction affects the effectiveness of the robot.

The tasks that students do are:

- Building and programming the robot.
- Checking if the maximum power is the most appropriate.
- Selecting a pair of wheels.
- Measure how much weight they can carry.
- Think and experiment if a different pair of wheels could enhance the performance.

Once they are satisfied with their model, it is time to compete! This part is usually their favourite. Each team is labelled with a colour, so each robot must set its light to the corresponding colour in order to be identified during the competition. We connect all the robots with chains, and they pull until we have a winner.

What students learn

In this class they learned, among other things:

• How Engineering Design Process works. They build, test and improve the model.
• Programming fundamentals. They test the program with different parameters.
• Basic mechanisms. Bevel gears.
• Scientific concepts. Balancing forces, equilibrium, friction.