Motion and Design Lesson 5 Designing Vehicles to Meet Requirements

Materials Design challenge card/sheet per group Standard vehicle per group Bucket of building pieces per group Bookend per group String with paper clip hooks per group 16 small washers in a cup per group 3 large washers per group 2 blocks of wood per group Timer Circle templates Ruler Colored pencils

Overview Will receive a design challenge: you must apply information collected in Lessons 3 and 4 to your own design of vehicles that move a specified distance in a specified amount of time. Will use problem solving skills to adjust the load on your vehicles, the force pulling your vehicles, and the weight of the vehicles themselves. Will modify the design of your vehicles by adding or removing pieces. Will read to learn more about a specialized vehicle, the Lunar Rover.

Background The vehicle must move a distance equal to the height of the work space in 4-6 seconds. First inclination might be to use the heaviest load and the smallest number of washers. However, you may find that as you increase the load to slow the vehicle, you must also add washers to the end of the string just to keep the vehicle moving. If you reduce the number of washers, the vehicle may not move at all. This is an interesting problem for which there are many solutions. You might decide to attach and drag washers from the rear of your vehicle to increase friction and reduce speed. Like engineers, in this lesson, you will plan, build, test, evaluate, modify, and retest your vehicles before presenting your results.

What made our vehicle move fast? What made our vehicle move slowly? Write a few sentences about what caused your vehicles to move slowly and what caused them to move fast when you used the falling-weight system in Lessons 3 and 4. What made our vehicle move fast? Make the vehicle lighter. Pull it with a lot of force. Have the wheels spin free. Force of my finger pushing it. What made our vehicle move slowly? Pull it with only a little bit of force. Make the vehicle heavy. Add extra weight. Make the wheels not spin right. Resistance Block placement *Brainstorm situations in which a vehicle would be required to move slowly or quickly.*

- Each member needs to have an opportunity to manipulate the building pieces and to help build the vehicle. - Once met challenge, must be able to repeat results to the class. - Set up falling-weight system like in Lessons 3 and 4 and begin challenge.

Discussion Describe the process you used to build your vehicles and test the vehicles’ motion. Before building your vehicle, how did your group prepare? Did you experience any problems as you were building your vehicle? How did you solve them? How did you test your vehicle to determine whether it met the requirements? How did your vehicle move? Did you change anything about your vehicle or the falling-weight system after you tested it? What change did you make? Why did you make this change?

Make a record drawing of your vehicle Make a record drawing of your vehicle. Make sure you color it according to the color of the building pieces. Construct the standard vehicle. Can refer to sheet in notebook.

As read article, think about why engineers designed this specialized vehicle to move slowly.

Extensions Survey adults to determine how many of them use design principles in their work. Publish the interviews or a summary of your findings in a Technological Design Newsletter that you will create. Draw pictures or take photographs to include in the newsletter. Take repeated measurements of the time it takes your vehicle to move 60 cm. Graph your data using a line plot or a line graph. Design and make a paper airplane. After a test flight, change the features to make it fly farther. Research the airplane Voyager, which was the first plane designed to fly around the world without stopping to refuel. When did the Voyager make its first flight? How long did it take the plane to fly around the world? What design features of the plane helped save fuel?

The End!!!