Troubleshooting Begins

This afternoon, I was helping my sister, Emily, build a robot.  We had looked through the instruction books and finally chose the style of a mars lander.  The design seemed simple enough and the only problem we had when making it was when we attached the gears to the base of the robot.  Using a device called a worm gear we gave the robot more control, and the added gears on the sides gave it more power.  When we finished our robot was very sturdy.

Excited to try it out, we created a simple go forward program, and found, to our dismay, that the robot barely moved an inch!  Emily and I tried one method after another only to come up against the same problem.  Studying our robot closely, we found that the gearbox, which had given our robot more precision, was actually the cause of our dilemma.

We brought our robot to our dad (The coach) for advice and he confirmed our theory.  Then we received a lesson on gears.  Coach explained how math fits into the usage of gears and gave us an example of a ratio.  Then he demonstrated how the different sizes of gears worked to either slow down the robot, maintain the same speed, or give the robot more speed while still giving it power.

Emily and I took apart our robot and, using our newely acquired knowledge, we solved the problem.  When we finished it looked nothing like the mars lander we had set out to build, yet it still had most of the same concept when using the gears.  

Emily and I both learned a valuable lesson today.

Wendy Mack
The LEGO Mountaineers

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