This week we will have our race on Monday to find out whose car was engineered to be the fastest! Then we will begin our next set of challenges. There will be a variety of automation challenges and each group will have their own challenges to figure out.
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Students will have now brainstormed ideas for their pull toys and will be grouped to begin deciding on a design and building it! Pictures will follow showing progress.
This week is a short week, ending on Wednesday. We will be doing some spring cleaning from our last unit by sorting all of the vex kit parts we used and taking inventory of the cases to identify any misplaced parts. Once we have finished that, we will be starting the pull toy project, finally! We should be able to start brainstorming and planning the build.
It has taken a little longer than expected to finish building those basic mechanisms. I will be hurrying the pace up a bit by splitting up the remaining mechanisms between the groups and have students present completed mechanisms to the rest of the class. This will allow us time to start designing and building on our pull toy project before we leave for spring break.
We have started building the basic mechanisms that will be part of our projects throughout the semester. We will probably spend this entire week building these mechanisms so that every students is able to see how to build them and how they work. After learning how to build these fundamental mechanisms we will have our first building challenge project: a pull toy.
This week we are exploring mechanical systems. We will define what a machine is and see several examples. We will then learn about the difference between torque and force, some of the terms for kinds of motion (oscillating, reciprocating, rotary, etc), and the relationship between torque and speed (especially as it applies to gear trains). We will then learn how to build some of the common basic mechanisms that will be part of many of our projects throughout the semester.
This week the class will be finishing work on, and then presenting, the research they have been doing on different types of robots to highlight the diversity of what we call "robots." Then the students will get familiar with some of the pieces and tools used in the VEX Robotics kits by completing a short build exercise. Then we will begin learning about mechanical systems by the end of the week.
This week we welcome some new faces to our class for the second half of the year! We will be beginning the robotics unit this week, and the first thing to learn about is algorithms. Automation is controlled by computer programming, which relies on algorithms to carry out tasks. Students should have a strong grasp of algorithms and the need for precision and accuracy when designing an algorithm to be carried out by a computer. Students will also help with sorting mechanical parts and taking inventory to allow them to familiarize themselves with the VEX Robotics parts we will be using throughout the course.
This week we are exploring a new program for creating 3D models. This program is called SketchUp Pro. After becoming familiar with this program we will be modeling the puzzle pieces we designed for the puzzle cubes.
The students have built prototypes out of linking cubes for the puzzle cubes they will be making. This week they will be working on the technical drawings for the pieces they designed and they will be exploring the program GeoGebra, a program that we will use for a few different purposes during this project. GeoGebra is also a free program that students can get at home if they want to play around with it and explore more of the many features of the program that we will not be making use of for this project.
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