We have some special guest bloggers in March and April as Ms. Nelson’s third graders (Longfellow) have agreed to share their thoughts on the Geared Up program with us. Geared Up is an excellent introduction to engineering, using LEGOs. The program was first proposed by Gretchen Junker during our last Call for Ideas. Ms. Junker currently serves as the Program Coordinator, and a VEX Robotics Coach. This week’s posts are the final entries, all about the LEGO “Amusement Park Rides” students created using their knowledge of simple Machines. You can read all the posts that you missed here.
Guest Blogger: Hans Viise
I had a ton of fun making our LEGO amusement park rides! My partner and I created a drop-type ride. It was really hard to make the ride stand up, so we added some LEGO support beams. We used wheels and axles and some gears so that our rope can pull up the kart so that we can make it drop straight down. In this picture, we are basically finished building our ride, but we are adding more details. We are struggling with how to make the ride drop down fast. We had so much fun doing this!
Guest Blogger: Gabriel Krizan
This is the Giant Drop, in LEGO form. It is made up of simple machines. A simple machine is a machine that makes jobs easier. The Giant Drop works by you pulling a string and the seat goes to the top of the ride. When it does get to the top, let go of the string and it will drop and hit the ground. When it falls down it goes really fast because the gravity pulls it down to the ground. If this ride were life-size, would you ride it?
