Project Background

In the 2011-2012 school year I received a mini-grant through Minnesota Independent School Forum (MISF) to purchase 12 LEGO Mindstorms Education Base Sets (9797) for the purpose of teaching Physics. During the summer and fall of 2012 I developed a Mindstorms NXT-g program which allowed a 2-motor NXT car to drive forward or backwards at quantitatively accurate velocities and accelerations. I did this with the intention of removing from my teaching FOREVER the annoying Arbor Scientific Constant Velocity Buggies and having something reasonably accurate to model constant acceleration besides marbles and ramps.

In the summer of 2013, I participated in a STEM educators workshop through Augsburg College in Minneapolis, MN which allowed me to fully develop my program into several useful programs which greatly expanded the motion topics I am able to cover using the robots. Here are lab ideas I have used or plan on using when I next teach motion, and how to do them yourself.