Day Eight: The Fast and the Heavy

Our second challenge of the day was beggining construction on our dragsters.  Our dragsters would need to be fast, but they also need to carry a weight.  I think it was about one kilogram.  We were given the restrictions of building the entire vehicle out of LEGOs.  The strategy/new skill we learned about was gears and gear trains.  The motors we used were fast, but not very powerful, so we need to add gears to gain power.  When you add more gears you recceive more power, but less speed.  The challenge centered around finding the perfect balance.

Every group started out with vastly different designs.  We decided upon a rather nondescript car with four wheels and a whole bunch of gears in our gear chain.  We had one of the biggest gear ratios in the class.

 Here is our intial trial outcome.

Due to the design, we had issues when one button gets knocked slightly and pieces start to fall off.  Everything needed to be balanced just right in order for the dragster(K²) to move.  We fixed our design problems and tried a second run.  We made it to the finish line this time....eventually.

Overall K² came in second to last in the class time trials.  We beat the big red fire truck, but still 27 second was a long time.  We have a ways to go.  The competitive cars were making it across in about 8-9 seconds.