On 12th and 19th February 2020, the English 9 XL course visited a technical workshop by the zdi-Netzwerk IST.Bochum.NRW that taught us how engines work via building LEGO. The main purpose of the two workshops was to awaken our interest in a possible career path involving machines and engines.

Two people with experience in this area guided us through the program and taught us new vocabulary like 'gear' and 'speed' to prepare us for the following tasks. On the first day we built various contraptions with a LEGO education set that was specifically for showcasing how gears work, from which we had to determine different points such as the gear ratio and how the gears work in relation to others. Whenever we had any issues the two instructors helped us with the construction and function of the pieces. On the second day, we constructed a race car along with a launcher out of the LEGO set. The launcher was a little battery powered motor and a little scaffold which you could drop the race car from. After we finished building the race cars and their launchers, we replaced the wheels with larger ones twice, as to find out how far they could travel with each pair. We then tested them and laid out a measuring tape to measure the distances. For the last wheels we had to use two of the measuring tapes because it went farther than two metres which was the length of the individual tapes.

The workshop was very entertaining and we learned a lot of new things. We recommend it to other students, even if the topic of your lesson isn't related to race cars or LEGO doesn't seem that interesting to you, because it is still fun and educational.

 

Text: Adam Bouzidi und Cheyenne Woods (9xl)

Fotos: C. Schröder