A cool way to learn about machines, transmissions, and, you guessed it - gears! Build five different gear-powered machines: a helicopter, a spinner toy, a hand mixer, an aircraft launcher, and a centripetal force machine. Kit includes 114 building pieces and an instruction booklet.
Build five fun gadgets and learn about gears and transmissions. Create a helicopter model with a rotor that spins using a rubber band-powered motor. Assemble a spinner toy that you wind up to launch a fast-spinning top. Make a centripetal force machine that flings its arms outward at high speeds. Build a hand-mixer that demonstrates a gear train. Construct a cool aircraft launcher that flings a model vehicle across the room on a zipline. A 28-page manual guides your model building and experiments with step-by-step illustrated instructions.
A learning and playing experience rolled into one, these kits are a fun way to discover and comprehend basic engineering principles. Often the ideas behind why machines work are difficult to explain and understand. That's where these kits can help. By giving children a hands-on building experience while explaining the concepts behind why their contraptions work, understanding things such as kinetic energy, how force is transmitted, and how hydraulics work becomes not only easier but also more engrained into the brain. In each kit, a specific theme is explored, such as gears and transmissions. The child builds 5 - 10 machines that demonstrate each theme and an explanation is given as to how the machines work. Sometimes, concepts are explored in a more experimental way - for instance, in a discussion of how gears transmit force, children twist differently sized gears together to see how that effects the speed of rotation. Each contraption has exploded-view picture directions which are step-by-step and show how each piece fits together. However, younger children may still need adult assistance with some of the more complex projects. - Janine
Trying it out for our engineering class!