Highland Middle School students hold Edible Car Race Day
Highland Middle School students in Kim Hauman's Applied Technology class recently raced edible cars they had constructed and learned many things - including that cars made of candy hold together longer than those made of fruits and vegetables.
In a STEAM activity that had students using their developing Design Thinking skills, students brought in race cars made of Milky Way bars with Life Saver wheels, or had a base of a banana or even a cucumber with cookies for wheels. (One fruit race car didn't survive the weekend and had to be demolished because it was rotting. Another banana car left out brought fruit flies with it for race day).
The new, hands-on activity was a big hit, and after the races, students worked on which cars were the fastest and which cars traveled the furthest.
"This is a STEM activity focusing on science, technology, engineering, and math," teacher Kim Hauman said. "This project emphasizes the engineer design process. It utilizes the STEAM skills the students have learned in seventh grade and will continue to develop this trimester.
"Some of those skills are questioning, researching, problem-solving, critical thinking, and cooperative learning. At the end of this, students will design an edible car that will compete in speed and distance. The cars will be made completely out of edible materials, except for bamboo skewers and toothpicks, which may be used to attach items."
Students were creative, Hauman noted. Some used jellied candy to attach wheels, while others, seeing that single cookies did not hold up well, used peanut butter to glue two cookies together to make one very solid wheel. Some students even melted marshmallows to use as glue on the vehicle.
"It's all a learning process. That's STEAM. These students were very creative," she said.
Students worked on teams to create the cars. The constraints for the edible cars were: they must be built entirely from food items edible to humans, must look like cars, must have at least two axles and at least three wheels. The edible car must not exceed the following dimensions: 10 centimeters wide (including wheels and/or hub caps), 10 centimeters tall (including windshield, car roof, people, flags and/or other accessories), 30 centimeters long (including front and rear bumpers and any other extensions).
The edible car must roll down a 20-degree, angled ramp that is approximately three feet long. Skewers and toothpicks are allowed to help attach items together. The edible car must operate on three or four rotating wheels or tires, and must be built entirely during class. Students must submit an itemized list of all material purchased and used for building the cars, which should cost under $10 for the group.
Students also had to research their ideas.
"I asked them to do a little research on edible cars and just cars in general. What factors will affect its performance?"
The teacher suggested students research inertia, friction, inclined planes, rotational inertia (disks and rings), Newton's 2nd Law, and online examples of edible cars. She also wanted her students to know the definitions and/or equations for "displacement" and "average velocity."
"They used that on race day to make measurements and do calculations as they calculated the average speed, average velocity of their car," Hauman said.
After research, students had to draw their cars to scale on graph paper, then build their prototypes.