Gears

Today we reviewed gears and gear ratios. Here is a helpful website:http://www.dynamicscience.com.au/tester/solutions/hydraulicus/gears.htm
We will be moving on from our prototype cars and begin working on our final versions.

Drivetrain

We have been working on our cars and most of the teams have been able to make their cars run at least down the hallway. We are gathering data and deciding what works and what does not. Students are now documenting their work on the class website EV2013: https://sites.google.com/a/cfsnc.org/ev2013/ Each team has their own page. They are organized by class period.
Homework due on Thursday, March 28th. Read about Drivetrains. This is from the STEP curriculum and can be accessed through the STEP page or on the resources page of the EV2013 website.

Car Building - Round 1

We used cannibalized parts from last years cars and attempted to make some quick and dirty prototype cars to get a sense of how they work. We were a little short on time and materials, but most everyone came close to getting something that will run. We should have all of them moving by tomorrow.

Sustainable Transportation Education Project (STEP)

We are starting a new project that will carry us through the spring trimester. We will be participating in a program from NCSU called STEP (Sustainable Transportation Education Project). We will work in teams of 3-4 to design, build, and test 1/10 scale electric cars with rechargable batteries and Solar charging stations. We will compete with other middle schools from around the state on April 27th. Part of the project involves building and testing virtual cars and charging stations on the website: www.whiteboxlearning.com. Each team has a student id to enter the site and build their car. The site has really good resources for learning about the science behind the designs.
There is also curriculum available at the STEP website: http://step.gridc.net/. It can be found under Member Resources, PEV Design Rally Curriculum. The RV information is for the high school program that uses Radio Controlled Vehicles.

Shifting to My Big Campus

It has been a month since the last posting on the blog. I have been moving over to the My Big Campus site to   keep things up to date. Since most of the 4th years are doing their Ultimate Writing Classes on My Big Campus, it seemed to make sense to get everyone working on the same format. All of the 4th years now have a username and password to access My Big Campus.