Last Friday Room 9 had our wonderful teacher, Jess for the day.
Jess Challenged us to use our STEAM skills to create a mini Zipline for a LEGO person. The Zipline had to safely transport the LEGO person from one point to another. She then instructed us to work in groups of two or three.
My group started by planning how we would make our Zipline seat. we worked together and drew a draft of our design on a peice of paper. Then we measured the LEGO person to make sure our seat would be the right size. Our original idea was to make a Square-Shapped seat, but we soon realized it wouldn’t work very well, so we changed our design to a circular shape instead.
We decided to use materials such a as paper, rubber bands, hooks. and tissue. First, we cut out a circle and a long rectangle from paper. Then we stapled them together to create a small cup shaped seat. Next, we stuffed the bottom with tissue to make a soft seat for our LEGO person. After that, we attached a rubber band to the sides with staples and tied a small hook onto the rubber band. Our Zipline seat was now complete.
We did a few test runs to make sure it was fast and safe for our LEGO person. During our testing, we noticed that we needed a safe place for the Zipline to land. We found a small jar and placed it at the end of the Zipline so the LEGO person could land safely inside it.
We also thought about replacing the hook with a straw to see if it would make the Zipline go faster. After testing it, we decided to switch back to the hook because the straw kept getting stuck on the Zipline wire, making it much slower.
Overall, this STEM challenge was lost of fun it taught us the importance of planning testing our ideas, solving problems, and working together as a team to improve our design.
