January 10, 2011
http://netapps.marshall.edu/lego/lessonplans/Car1.html
This is the Monday class. They are putting away the FLL projects from the Tuesday class.
Today they are building a car from the instructions from the pictures on http://netapps.marshall.edu/lego/lessonplans/Car1.html
They are checking if they can see small differences in the cars.
These are the pieces.
Axles are measured by putting them near a beam or plate and counting the number bumps long they are.
How the back wheels are connected is different than how the front wheels are connected.
The back with a single axle is hard to turn.
The separate axle connectors in the front make those wheels easy to use for turns.
This version works well with a bit of spacing between the wheels and
beams
. 
Measure the distance that the cars travels.
When I picked up the cars by the wheels (squeezing them close together)
and placed the car at the top 
there is so much friction that the cars went nowhere.
There is very little obvious difference in the looks of the cars.
It took a bit of time to figure out that there was too much friction
with the wheels against the beams.
If the beams are not parallel there is friction from the axle against the beam.
These are the kinds of observations that we hope for the students to see and record.
