Day 2 Section 2

POWER!! 

Problem synopsis

How are we going to power our new base? Probably electricity, but what is going to generate the electricity? How is electricity generated anyway? You have not bought a small nuclear fusion / perpetual motion machine from Earth. Have you?????

You may have worked on the second MIT challenge this year, investigating magnets. In our exercise, we looked at magnets and played with electromagnetic motors. You have been playing with electromagnetic motors too, (what’s powering your buggy?).

Watch the video on the site from BISHCMC Head of Physics, Mr Stockley, and have a play with the motors that are set up. The beauty of these motors is that they are 3D printed, so as long as there is filament to go in, then new products can be made all the time.

Analysis

You are going to repurpose your fusion generator from your spaceship to provide the power. The problem is that the power needs to be turned into something useful, a force in some direction.

Identify a problem that our new community might need tools for, a motor for.

STEAM process

In your journals follow and record your progress through the problem-solving process.

Analysis - What do you understand the problem to be? What are your success criteria? What are you working towards? What tool are you going to design around the concept of the 3D-printed motor?

Design - Sketch out your ideas, remember the more annotations you give, the better. 

Build - This time we are not going to build the tool from the designs, that may be too much for a Sunday morning. Instead, we are going to look at the pile of gears and sticks we have. What can we make work?

Evaluation - Link back to your success criteria - did you succeed in your designs? If so, yea! If not, what else could you have done?