Program Overview
The Motorized Toy Car Challenge has been designed to supplement the curriculum of teachers and is intended for seventh-grade students whose teachers are using a multidisciplinary approach. Like all AWIM challenges, the Motorized Toy Car Challenge will join together teachers, students, and industry volunteers in an exploration of physical science while addressing essential mathematic and scientific concepts and skills.
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In the Motorized Toy Car Challenge, a fictitious toy company called Mobility Toys Inc. presents the challenge in the form of a Request For Proposal (RFP). The company is interested in receiving new designs for moving toys. The toy company sends the RFP to the class requesting written proposals, sketches, and working models of designs that meet a specific set of requirements. Over the course of the curriculum, a variety of activities will prepare the students to develop a proposal and a prototype for a toy of their own design. The students must work in teams and as a team to complete the requirements stated in the letter. The program culminates in student presentations of their working models and a discussion of the design teams' efforts to address the challenge.
Students begin the Engineering Design Experience (EDE) process with goal setting activities that encourage group building and identifying tasks. Students continue to work in teams to develop the prototypes of models through which they explore many of the science and engineering concepts central to the toys' successful performance. Teacher-directed activities in the science, mathematics, technology education, social sciences, and language arts classes will cover the basic concepts and skills needed to understand the principles behind the prototypes and apply them when building the models. These lessons include demonstrations and hands-on experience examining force and friction, simple machines, levers and gears, torque, etc. In mathematics, students apply an understanding of ratio and proportion as they explore the relationship between gear ratios and the radius of a wheel. Through gathering information from the client and eventual "customers" and conducting controlled experiments, the students explore data collection and retrieval techniques and apply basic statistical analysis. In addition, students apply their public speaking and writing skills as they prepare a workable proposal and presentation.
