Junkbots

Last Wednesday (11th June 2012) junkbots returned home. During the Inspiring Girls into Engineering event held at the School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton a junkbots session was held. Two groups of girls from two local primary schools built a drawing junkbots remarkably quickly (going to have to think of ways to extending it!) that - drew patterns without anyone touching it; -carried the battery pack (4 AA batteries) Details of the work developed and a case study can be found at:  http://www.hestem-sw.org.uk/project?id=16&pp=540 Details of the case study can be found at:  http://projects.hestem-sw.org.uk/upload/Junkbot_june_northampton.pdf Details of an in-school session plan can be found at:  http://projects.hestem-sw.org.uk/upload/Planning_Process_junkbots_KS3_4_longer.docx Details of an STEM club session plan can be found at:  http://projects.hestem-sw.org.uk/upload/Planning_Process_junkbots_primary_short8.docx If...

For the last few months at lot of the outreach work from the Junkbots project was focused on the exercises based around turning cans into drawing bots or junk clearing bots. Yesterday (21st June 2012) the robot programming side of the project was trialled with primary schools. The Northamptonshire based Nene Lakes Extended Services ran "Chemistry at Work Day" event hosted by Scott Bader, Wollaston  and the robot programming was also included as well. The programming idea, an off-shoot of the junkbots project, was for the students to programming an NXT Lego robot to dance using only four commands that allowed the robot to: go forward for so many centimetres go back for so many centimetres go turn right for so many degrees go turn left for so many degrees The structure of the activity was up to 5 minutes introduction to the activity up to 10 minutes as a group of usually up seven; design a dance routine of no more than four moves up to 10 minutes putting the ro...

Junkbots on Prezi If you would like to know more about the Junkbots project contact scott.turner@northampton.ac.uk

Friday 16th March 2012, the junkbots project moved to year 6 at Roade Primary School.  The aim was to Look in to how to use electric motors to make junk move, along with the effect of weight, surface contact effects and positioning of the weights. The task was to make something that could move along a table as quickly as possible. Good example is the 'sleigh' shown above, a mixture of straws, yoghurt pots, pens, plastics and electric motors. What was especially good about this one was - it went in a straight line, shaking its way along and even carried its batteries. This was especially good as usually these junkbots have a tendency to spin around. The group that developed this one investigated repositioning the batteries, thereby adjusting the weight to get it to travel in a straight line. Thank you to the year 6 at Roade Primary School for inviting me, lots of budding engineers there. If you want to know more about Junkbots please contact:  scott.turner@northampto...

The University of Northampton has recently recognised the work on the Junkbot project with an award for achievement for Volunteering at the Volunteering awards ceremony. More details can be found at: http://tunis.northampton.ac.uk/2011/06/09/staff-recognised-at-annual-volunteering-awards/