Here’s a quick, fun challenge that can be used as a filler at the end of a lesson or as introductory build to draw attention to the importance of robust construction.

The challenge

Design and build a LEGO car that, when given a gentle push, will roll off a table and survive a fall onto the floor.

Teacher notes

For this year’s class, the students were restricted to using only the parts from the top tray of a single EV3 kit.

It might be interesting to frame this challenge in other ways, e.g. by limiting the total number of pieces, total weight, or ….???

The students were given a LEGO minifig to represent the dummy, and instructed not to have any motors or other electronic parts on their cars.

And for anyone who asked, the rule was also no tape, no adhesive, no rubber bands, etc. (-:

Here are some of the results…

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Rob Torok

I'm a teacher in Tasmania, Australia, and have been using LEGO MINDSTORMS with my students since 2001. I'm the editor in chief for LEGO Engineering (this site) as well as the content editor for LEGO Education Australia (LEGOeducation.com.au).

Latest posts by Rob Torok (see all)

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