Students in the Project Lead the Way (PLTW) engineering program at Columbia Early College High School recently participated in an exciting Car Construction Challenge that allowed them to apply their knowledge in a fun, hands-on way.
As part of the challenge, students worked in teams to design, build, and test small autonomous vehicles made from basic materials like mouse traps, rubber bands, craft sticks, and wheels. The goal was to construct a car that could travel as far as possible across the classroom using only the energy from the wound mousetrap spring.
Participating in a project like this pushes students' problem-solving abilities, having to think through every aspect of the design, accounting for friction, energy transfer, aerodynamics, and more.
