Team Extreme: The Statistics of Success

Cars Challenge

Description

In Team Extreme students learn about the engineering design process. The Cars Challenge is an interactive Squeak web activity designed to help students understand how engineers improve designs through experimentation. Four cars have been designed to follow a colored lane on a race track using sensors and specific variables in a script. The students choose one of the cars and record the time the car takes to make one lap around the track. After converting the length of the lane to meters, students determine the average speed of the car in meters per second. Students then experiment with the variables in the script to complete one lap as quickly as possible while maintaining control of their cars. Students may choose to race against one another and are challenged to create their own cars and race tracks.

Before starting this activity, students should complete the first four parts of the Drive-A-Car activity to familiarize themselves with Squeak. The Cars Challenge builds on the first activity. If students choose to create their own race tracks, they should experiment with the Squeak project, PaintTrack.

This activity uses a free, exciting, multimedia, object-oriented programming environment called Squeak that runs on many different computer platforms. Important Note: This activity uses the new version of Squeak made available in September 2004. If you installed Squeak prior to that, you should update your version of Squeak at www.squeakland.org.

If you don't have Squeak installed on your computer, you will need to first download the plug-in for Squeak before doing this activity. You can download the plugin for Squeak at www.squeakland.org and then double-click the downloaded icon for easy installation. Once you have the Squeak plugin installed, you can click on the image above or link below to start the activity. You can also get a valuable Squeak Quickstart guide and other information at the Squeakland web site to help when doing this project. Once you have the Squeak plugin installed, you can click on the image above or link below to start the activity. Set your resolution to 1024x768 to use this Squeak project.

Instructional Objectives

The student

• will convert measurements from pixels to meters.
• will gather data to determine the speed of the car they choose.
• will change variables for their car and gather data for these variables.
• will identify variables for their car that make the car complete one lap in the shortest time.
• will problem solve to design a car that travels the fastest while maintaining control.
• may race their cars against other students.
• may create their own cars and race tracks.

Go to Squeak Cars Challenge Web Activity