FRICTION and Car Building

We are starting a new year of Lego club at our local museum and I want to have more of a theme in my lessons this year. I think I will focus on physics and engineering with my 1st graders. There is a great site by xx that has a bunch of physics/engineering oriented Lego Lesson Plans that I am going to try to use:

http://www.marshall.edu/LEGO/plans.html

For our October meeting, we are going to do look at Friction and how it will affect building a car. My reference is athttp://www.marshall.edu/lego/lessonplans/Car1.html

Materials:

• Lego wheels and axles of various types
• Lego bricks
• 2 or more Green lego plates
• sheets of surfaces to test with different resistance levels 
• sand paper
• smooth plastic sheet
• ??
• other materials that have more or less friction
• a pre-built friction car as defined in the specs of the lesson plan in the link above.

My lesson plan:

1. Introduction to lego club and the rules
2. Introduction of children to each other with show and tell
3. Define Friction (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/friction)

1. fric·tion

     [frik-shuhn] –noun
1. surface resistance to relative motion, as of a body sliding or rolling.
2. the rubbing of the surface of one body against that of another.
2. Discuss this with them and how friction can affect speed and such.
3. Discuss surfaces that cause more or less friction
4. Use the pre-built friction car as an example 
1. on a ramp (as shown in the web site above with a green plate)
2. Use different surfaces I brought to show how surfaces can change the speed, too.
5. Discuss how one wheel/axle combination might be faster than another due to friction
6. Discuss when you might want more or less friction with your wheels. (in snow, on racetrack, etc)
7. Have a free time to build their own cars 
8. Test out the cars 
1. on the ramp
2. on the different surfaces
9. Have the children decide which car 
1. was the fasted (discuss why) - Perhaps best for a race?
2. which was the slowest (discuss why) - Perhaps best on a slippery surface or steep hill?
10. If time allows have races.
11. Clean up time
12. Lego draft (each child chooses 10 lego pieces to take home)