Young Engineers Session 2

Building things that move: Electricity, motors, and gears

This session gives students experiences using electricity, motors, and gears. Students design and build a small car to take home.

All lesson plans and handouts are provided here in PDF format. If you use any of these lessons, please provide feedback.

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Lesson 1	Simple Circuits I	Handout
Lesson 2	Simple Circuits II	Handout 1 Handout 2
Lesson 3	Using gears: Why? What do they do?	Handout
Lesson 4	More gears
Lesson 5	What conducts electricity? Building a burglar alarm
Lesson 6	Secret Candy Safe
Lesson 7	Experimenting with real gears, pulleys, switches, stripped down motor
Lesson 8	Experimenting gear ratios and wheel sizes for cars
Lesson 9	Building a small car I: Building the gearbox
Lesson 10	Building a small car II: Choosing and preparing wheels and chassis
Lesson 11	Building a small car III: Assembling the car	Handout
Lesson 12	Building a small car IV: Wiring the remote controller
Lesson 13	Building a small car V: Completing the car	Handout
Lesson 14	Building with PVC pipe (If there is time to dedicate one class period to experimenting with the PVC pipe)	Handout 1
Lesson 15	Build a structure to support a pulley (If Lesson 14 was done. Otherwise, use Lesson 16 that follows)	Handout 1 Handout 2
Lesson 16	Alternate Lesson - Elevator Project I: Building with PVC pipe - Build a structure to support a pulley
Lesson 17	Building an elevator II	Handout
Lesson 18	Building an elevator III
Lesson 19	Building an elevator IV	Handout