Are you LEGO® Smart™? Are your students? Being LEGO Smart is more than building with LEGO® bricks. It’s having the ability to work in teams, solve problems, and create solutions. It means understanding key science, technology, engineering, and math concepts – not just on paper, but through demonstration. LEGO Smart students don’t just know it, they DO it. The sets, software, and curriculum designed by LEGO Education harness the power of the LEGO brick and combine to create learning opportunities for students that will help develop the skills needed for a lifetime of creating, solving, and contributing to a global society. Be LEGO Smart – be the future.
LEGO Smart Creativity Contest Entry By Gail Chapman, Luella High School
Tell the students that today they will be making a catapult! Ask them to take out ond 2x4, two 2x2, both 2x6, the 1x6, the 1x4, the 2x8, both flat 2x4s, the flat 4x4 and the flat 2x6 LEGO bricks from their LEGO Smart Kits (then promptly take a breather). To begin, ask the students to take the 1x8 and the 2x6 bricks and line them up long ways with a quarter of the 1x8 being in the middle (the rest being open space). Using one of the 4x2 bricks, connect all three of the pieces together on the bottom; using the 1x6 brick to connect them on the top. Tell the students that this is the launcher. Connect one of the 2x2 bricks to the center bottom of the launcher. Now connect the flat 2x6 to a quarter of the far end of the launcher (the 2x8 end). On top of the remaining spaces of the flat 2x6 add a 2x2 first followed by the 2x4. Finally connect the 1x4 to either end of the flat 4x4; tell the students "that it is your launch pad!" Now comes the fun. Instruct the students to pull out the small pink block from the kit and tell them to place it on the launch pad (that is their ammunition). Now tell the students to make guesses as to where the best place for the launch pad would be along the arm of the launcher. Then let them experiment and learn for themselves (make sure to tell them not to aim at any other students!). Close the lesson with an explanation of torque and the students will never forget this fun physics concept.
Lesson Learned: Students will learn about torque and how it relates to arm length with the use of a Lego catapult. It will introduce students to the idea that there are certain physical properties that govern how the world functions.