High School Design Competition 2016
March 29, 2016
Ryan, Carly, Kassy, Devon
When we were first given our supplies in the morning, all of us were fairly overwhelmed- how were we supposed to make a car out of all of these parts? We did begin to put parts together, and our confidence grew. We didn't really think about brainstorming because we didn't see value in it- we just wanted to try as best we could making a car. Before lunch began, we had finished building our car, but we couldn't get it to move. Our group spent the majority of lunch attempting to fix it, but to no avail. We finally decided to rebuild our entire car even though we only had about 30 minutes left. We scaled our large, unstable 4-wheeled car into a thin, aerodynamic car with 3 wheels. This design was much more stable than the previous one, and consequently, the car actually moved! From our experiences at HSDC 2016, we learned the benefits of brainstorming, and that bigger isn’t always better. All of us enjoyed our time here, and we look forward to next year’s competition.
Physics Rocks! Good habits lead to success, bad habits lead to failure.
Group Members: Kevin, Liam, Dante, Ronan
Our task for this competition was to build a motorized car that could travel 25 ft with the highest possible velocity using the materials given to us. We immediately determined that, to achieve the highest possible velocity, we would need to have the largest gear attached to the motor, immediately followed by a small gear. We used a design with four wheels and the motor mounted at the back. The battery was mounted at the front to better balance the design. Another important aspect of our design was the usage of bevel gears, which change the direction of rotation from horizontal to vertical, allowing us to adequately spin the rear axle of our design, resulting is rear wheel drive. The major drawback we faced was that the gears did not initially properly make contact and therefore the car did not move. We solved this problem by using a spacer to keep the lowermost gear in place and therefore maintain proper contact. We were ecstatic to see that our design was able to move just in time for the presentation. We then presented our design the the panel of judges, explaining the various engineering principles we applied in our design, as well as our car’s capacity for zombie defence! Overall, we really enjoyed the day, being able to experiment and toy around with various designs as well as to work as a team to overcome challenges. Although towards the end we were incredibly doubtful that our design would move, we managed to persevere with a car that we are truly proud of.
Group: Tomasz, Josh, Max, Justin
Great work by all our students. You make us proud to be Cardinals! CHIRP!!!
A special thank you to Mr. Latouf and his Grade 11 and 12 Physics classes
