Cars at the Works

The project at The Works this month was cars. The focus was on the engineering process, complete with restrictions on supplies and time. Basically, we were given supplies and had to build a car. Kiddo regularly builds a K'nex car to run on the ramp at The Works, so building a car was nothing new. The materials, however, were entirely new.



The wheels are the bottoms of cups, fastened with tacks to a dowel fed through a drinking straw. Kiddo cut his wheels out by himself, which is only remarkable because he generally doesn't like to cut things like that. He is a perfectionist (like his mom), and his cutting skills rarely live up to his ideals. It is easier for him to deal with the imperfections if they are someone else's. Kiddo needed very little assistance from me. Hammering the tacks into the dowel was the only place I assisted. Kutey had the design of her car (on the left) completely figured out, so I was simply the labor.



Kiddo had to take his car apart and rebuild it when we got to the ramp room--it veered. So we spent most of our time with the cars. Kiddo spent a little time building with K'Nex, Kutey and I programmed the Bee-Bot to go through the maze we created, and we all worked together to make the gears work. We had some success in all of the endeavours, which has not always been the case!