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Technology Titans of Travis

Mrs. Elkin's Fourth/ Fifth Grade 

Technology Projects | Lego Simple Machines

Technology Projects
Mrs. Elkins had her fourth and fifth grade students collecting their own data over the course of a week.  Students were responsible for designing the layout of the Excel spreadsheet, creating two different charts or graphs and explaining what the graphs meant.  They even created a chart with a cumulative frequency and learned how to use the functions within Excel to calculate the totals!  They thought it was "pretty cool" when the computer did instantly what took them so long!

Lego Simple Machines

Mrs. Elkins is beginning a new project using Lego Motorized Simple Machines.  Simple Machines is a  kit designed by Pitsco Lego intended to help children understand the concepts of physical science and simple machines.  Children build bridges, chairs, windshield wipers, etc. add a motor and explain what happens, why it is happening, why or why not their structure is solid, and more.   Keep an eye out for pictures and explanations of various activities.

BASIC SHAPES

In this activity students built triangles and rectangles. However, it was difficult making a connection between triangles and their effect on the rigidity of a structure.  They could tell if the shape was rigid or collapsible, but not why.  They saw that angles were acute in the triangle and right in the rectangle; therefore they hypothesized that a shape with acute angles would be rigid.  They decided that a trapezoid had acute angles and would therefore be rigid.  They proceeded to build a trapezoid and test their hypothesis. They discovered their hypothesis was incorrect.  One student suggested that the trapezoid still collapsed because it was still a quadrilateral and therefore related to the rectangle which was collapsible.

In this lesson, students built a deck chair.  Instead of building as a class and stopping to discuss after each step, students built one section and passed it to the next person to continue building.  Students had to watch closely as each step was added.  Students were asked to move the back of the deck chair to different positions and determine what shape they noticed when looking at the side of the chair.  They immediately recognized the triangle between the back support and the seat of the chair.  However, they also noticed another triangle created by the legs which they suggested added support when someone sat down. The upper triangle supported the person when they leaned back.

BASIC LEVERS

Today students created motorized windshield wipers.  Students each wrote a question to investigate and proceeded to build and answer the worksheet.  Their excitement was contagious as they built and attached the motor to the wipers and it actually worked!  Several groups had some difficulty with the motors and could not get it to operate.  They are quickly figuring out that they must follow directions exactly for the machines to work! One group could see that the machine did not work when the motor was attached but did not quite realize it was the motor itself that was not working – not the machine – it worked fine by hand!  They started taking apart the motor one piece at a time.  They were eventually able to see the fact that the metal in the wire and the metal in the motor must make contact for any power transfer to happen.

MORE LEVERS

As students worked through the building of this machine and motor, several problems or questions came up.  One group found that their beam would not move when the gear was turned.  They studied their machine asking the question, “Why doesn’t it work?” It took them a bit to troubleshoot and find out why but they were able to locate the problem.  Many students wondered if the motor would actually worked - it does! They explored making a variety of rhythmic sounds by moving pegs inserted into the gear.  As the motor turned the gear, the pegs would press down on the levers producing a tapping sound.