Subject:
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Re: Best "practical" use of LEGO?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.general
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Date:
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Tue, 4 Oct 2005 01:40:20 GMT
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Viewed:
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1492 times
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A 180 degree oval turn of track fits perfectly with the shorter dimension of my
old lab demo table, so I set up a long oval (to get the trains past the sink)
and crashed some of my Lego trains together to demonstrate conservation of
momentum and energy in collisions with the high school physics classes I used to
teach. The Lego trains work a lot better than the HO trains and track I used
before that, because a) they are more massive, b) they are larger and thus more
visible throughout the classroom and c) they can be put back together again
quite easily whenever they jump the edge of the table.
In a NASA educator workshop I attended four years ago, we constructed
microgravity well drop chambers out of Lego bricks (and some Technic parts) and
used a Lego astronaut minifig to simulate the effect on an astronaut travelling
in a similar real-life chamber. The goal was to have the astronaut, attached to
some bricks by Lego rubber bands, travel as high as possible during the flight
without sustaining injury on impact. Our group achieved the greatest height (by
far), but unfortunately, our astronaut didn’t survive the drop. (His legs and
helmet separated from his head and torso upon reentry.)
One of the rat care books on our shelf shows some little homes and play areas
for inside rat cages, constructed from the bricks. (Personally, I’d choose Mega
Bloks over Lego for that, because the rats will invariably gnaw at the walls,
and I’d rather that didn’t happen to the proper bricks. :D)
- Michael
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Best "practical" use of LEGO?
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| (...) The bolt that held the handle to the base of my vacuum cleaner fell out, so the thing kept falling apart when I tried to pick it up. It turned out that a 6 long technic axle with a bushing at each end was the perfect length and diameter to (...) (19 years ago, 4-Oct-05, to lugnet.general, FTX)
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