robots

We continue to work with our Lego Robolab kits. While researching for this unit, I have found one college that uses the same kits to teach some pretty advanced engineering principles. The picture above is of a gearbox the students built. I found it on one of the college websites.There are seven gears in the gear box, all connected, some with 8 teeth, some with 24. We turned gear A, then gear B, and the results were very interesting. Gear A is pretty hard to turn by hand, but makes gear B spin rapidly. Gear B is very easy to turn, but makes gear A turn only very slowly.
We have only scratched the surface obviously, but some good basic principles have been learned.