science project

**0rion** · 05-02-2012, 10:31 PM

Zach has a science project due at school friday. They were supposed to use a simple machine and make a game out of it. Zach chose a pulley as his simple machine so we decided on a race car game. Zach actually did a lot of the work and I just assisted him for the most part. I helped hold power tools and things like that when we had to drill or cut and I bent the round stock to make the crank because he wasn't strong enough to bend it and I didn't really want him handling the torch just yet. He learned a lot on this project. He measured and taped everything off and painted everything. We went to hobby lobby and got a few stickers to put on there because as an 8 year old you gotta have stickers.

Surprisingly the game itself works pretty good. The 1/4" round stock works well with the small pulleys because you have to crank the handle a bunch to get the car down the track. I'm 3-0 against him so far.

I don't expect it to come home from school in one piece so I wanted to make sure me and him got a few games in first.

sorry for the blurry phone pics but you get the idea

**5.0THIS** · 05-03-2012, 01:24 AM

Looks like a pretty cool father/son project.

**tatertot91** · 05-03-2012, 02:01 AM

Yeah it is
You could put another pulley on the crank side to make em a little quicker

**Zapper2003** · 05-03-2012, 03:28 AM

Pretty ingenious use of pulleys...Put a wall at the end so its more like a crash-test

**0rion** · 05-03-2012, 03:48 AM

Originally Posted by tatertot91

Yeah it is
You could put another pulley on the crank side to make em a little quicker

we didn't want them any faster. It would only take a couple turns of the crank to the finish line. Set up like this you have to crank more so that means it's more of a driver's race

**0rion** · 05-03-2012, 04:19 AM

Originally Posted by 5.0THIS

Looks like a pretty cool father/son project.

it was a cool little project. He got to run some pretty cool tools although he was scared shitless of the angle grinder for some reason.

Originally Posted by Zapper2003

Pretty ingenious use of pulleys...Put a wall at the end so its more like a crash-test

I've hit my project quota for the week......we're gonna roll with what we have.

I can already tell you what breaks first.......some kid will crank the car all the way into the pulley and break the string.

***SMWS6TA*** · 05-03-2012, 07:12 AM

That is a cool science project.....

**FinZ28** · 05-03-2012, 07:22 AM

Kind of reminds me of a project we did in industrial arts back in middle school. We built cars out of a block of balsa wood and they ran on a CO2 cartridge stuck in the back. Two cars ran side by side on a track, just like a drag race

That's a good science project y'all made, glad he enjoyed it.

**Zapper2003** · 05-03-2012, 08:26 AM

Originally Posted by FinZ28

Kind of reminds me of a project we did in industrial arts back in middle school. We built cars out of a block of balsa wood and they ran on a CO2 cartridge stuck in the back. Two cars ran side by side on a track, just like a drag race

That's a good science project y'all made, glad he enjoyed it.

Interesting. We did the same thing

I still have my 1st place trophy too

**kevinfromnj** · 05-03-2012, 04:25 PM

Cool project. TO keep the string from breaking put a spring on the end of it..

**0rion** · 05-03-2012, 06:01 PM

Originally Posted by kevinfromnj

Cool project. TO keep the string from breaking put a spring on the end of it..

that's a good idea.....I may do something like that. My wife picked up the string while she was out shopping. I specifically said "twine" but ended up with thread pretty much. A stronger twine would help but I was even thinking that the string breaking probably ain't all bad since the next thing to break would be the pulley probably. A portion of the project said that he had to write out rules.....he put a rule in that if the car hits the pulley you're DQ'd

**0verkill** · 05-04-2012, 06:15 AM

that is cool im looking forward to when my kids get to do stuff like this.

**0rion** · 05-04-2012, 11:17 AM

Today was project day at school and he woke up excited. This morning the school had "donuts with mom" so his mom took him to school and they dropped it off in the classroom on the way to get donuts. She said he was showing it off to everyone in the halls on the way to his class. I read a lot of guys on here against having kids. Day's like today is just one of the reasons it's so cool to have them. There's more to it than that but this is one of the nice things about having kids. They're so easy to please usually and the smallest things to us seems like the impossible to them. I can't wait until he gets home to see how science class went today. We're heading straight to the woods in the camper after school today. We do a yearly camping trip with all the kids where the kids run wild for a couple days and the dad's sit around drinking beer all weekend. I'll update the thread sunday night or monday to let you guys know how it went and if it's still in one piece.

**0verkill** · 05-06-2012, 06:25 AM

oya the more of the same stuff you like that they get into is so cool i for sure would like to see how it did too. this is what my boy and i did last week