Conceptual Physics – 3D Car Design

A project that Freshmen complete every year during their Conceptual Physics course is designing and creating Lego cars that are raced down a ramp and measured for speed and distance. This year, with the addition of the 3D printer, students will now either design their car completely using Tinkercad or use a combination of printed parts and Lego.

The project started with a introduction to 3D printing and how the process works, we then discussed the make-up of a car, how to translate their ideas and sketches (some drawn on the iPad using Notability’s drawing tools) into a software design and how to divide up the work between each group member. We also spent some time discussing wheel design and how wheels could be attached to the main body of their cars.

Students then created their cars in Tinkercad, based on their sketches and ideas. Some groups split the work into three with each student creating a part of the car, some worked together on one computer and others created three cars based on the same design and choose a winner to send to the printer.

A selection of photos of the students working in the Science computer lab, some car sketches, screenshots of the models in Tinkercad, and some of the finished printed models can be seen below:

This entry was posted in Tech in the Classroom. Bookmark the permalink.