Good Work Everyone. DragBots

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Here is a review of what the workgroups have done:
Groups made a "first effort" at making a fast robot. They recorded data and described the design of the drive train.
Groups then gradually edited programs to get the dragsters to "start on brighter," and to "record and display time", while "stopping on dark."

These designs were then rebuilt to try to make the 'bot go faster. Groups used real science to test the new designs. Data was recorded from time trials again to compare to the first set of data. Then analysis was done to determine if more speed was attainable.

I am very pleased with all of the groups results!! I am looking forward to next week to hear you explain what you accomplished.
Time Trials
Three-way Drag Race
More Drag Racing Dragbots

Queens Spring Challenges Revealed

Click here to see the Challenges.

The Region 4 Spring Pentathalon Challenge is upon us! Pentathalon means competing in five events. Teams will do their best to master each event to showcase and develop their engineering and programming skills.

The teacher in me really loves the mystery challenge because no one knows what it is until the day of the event. It causes teams' heart rates to increase and the energy levels to go off the charts.

I am looking forward to seeing what my students will come up with--I know they will surprise and impress with their creativity, engineering skills and programming finesse.

Excellent Progress

Task: Build a robot that goes faster than everyone else's. Distance: ten feet.
Activity: Use Robolab technology to devise a method to measure the velocity of your RobotDragster.
Next: Use the data from your measurements to determine if adjustments are making your robot faster.

I am very pleased with student reactions to this new activity. We discussed how measuring velocity can be done internally or externally. I heard some clever ideas from groups about how they planned to accomplish this task.

I would like to see simple drawings of the code. I would like to see drawings of the external plans.

Some groups reported that using touch sensors to hit a whisker or gate at the end of the 10' could be a solution to stop a timer. Another group may use two sensors linked to a separate RCX to be a starting sensor, the other to be used as an finish line sensor. One group is using Robolab code to build an internal speedometer. All of these are excellent ideas.