Be stoked this school year! Bring Makey Makey to your classroom.
Written collaboratively with Aaron Graves. How does acceleration change from a downward drop, to a flat surface, to an uphill ramp? With Makey Makey and Scratch you can measure the change in rate over your desired distance and catch the correct time as your toy car drives over simple DIY switches.
Building a Track |
Use the Makey Makey to effectively time your car's speed. Students will use this Scratch game (or create their own game) to record the amount of time the car travels over a given distance.
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Get Inventive with DIY Switches: Tip #1 |
Ideas for DIY Switches: Let your students get inventive with the switches for their car track. Here are some things to think about when designing switches.
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Get Inventive with Switches: Tip #2 |
Tip #2: This switch is a nod to a common start gate in Hot Wheels and uses a contact flag switch. This contact switch is also similar to an electronics component often called a snap action SPDT or roller lever switch. To build this switch, we used straws as the flag post since they fit perfectly in a Duplo LEGO. Then we made one steady aluminum flag for EARTH (on the right with the grey alligator clip in the picture), and one moveable aluminum flag connected to the up arrow key press. The moveable flag is rapped around a wooden dowel and placed into a straw which allows the flag to move easily when the car hits the flag. As the car passes this switch, the key press flag rotates and hits the steady flag connected to EARTH thus completing the circuit and allowing Scratch to start or stop the timer. We used this particular switch to stop the timer for the end of the car's acceleration on the track. |
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Wiring Switches |
Feel free to use or remix this project in Scratch for timing acceleration and deceleration. To wire your switches, attach alligator clips to switches and Makey Makey as follows:
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Log Distance and Rate with our Plug and Play Timer or with Scratch |
Students can use this chart or create their own to log the dedicated distance, changes in slope, time of travel, and added weight for each experiment. Students will need to log the time for each car trip and hit the green flag to reset the time. They can run as many experiments as you desire. Timer App
Go to Timer App!Utilizing Distance Formula to find Rate The Scratch game has a formula built in and is programmed to run the equation 10 times.
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Extensions (Optional) |
Here are some ideas for Extensions!
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Computational Thinking, Cars, Physics, Timer, Track
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