Sunday, March 1, 2015

Lego Racer

First iteration of our car

Our final gear iteration.



The gears we used (40, 24, 16, and 8)




Summary: Our process was overall a lot of trial and error. We spent a long time figuring out how we wanted our car to work and experimenting with different gears. When we finally got our car to move, the design process moved quickly as we made adjustments in order to increase speed.
Our final design was good and sturdy but probably too long and had the wrong diameter wheels. I think that if given more time, we could have redone the gears to make or car even faster.

Analysis: Our final gear ratio was 1:20.8, not including our wheels. We ended up using first a 16 gear, then a 40 gear, then 8 to 40 gears, and 24 to 40.

Here are our calculations:

16:40, 8:40, 24:40

(16/40)(8/40)(24/40) = 1:20.8

4 comments:

  1. I liked seeing how your final design emerged. It went really fast and was pleasing to look at too. I liked how you thought about the potential modifications you could have made - changing the wheels and gears and shortening the body - it showed that you were really invested in your design.

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  2. I'm glad you got a pretty good gear ratio! It might help if you drew a diagram explaining how all the gears fit together.

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  3. Nice work! I can see that you really thought about the construction and worked through it through trial and error to confirm your intuition. Although we didn't talk about how the wheel diameter affects the gear ratio until after the race, I would be curious to see what the new gear ration of your car and the average of the car would be.

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  4. Great car! I tried to use the large thin wheels for my car and was not able to make the car move. I am wondering whether the length or the gear of your car enabled you to use such tires or if that matters at all.

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