Gears: Gear Trains

amomentmaker2 Comments

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In a past article here, we discussed many of the different gears that LEGO has available for use. In today’s article, we will talk about different ways to maximize your gear train. Gear trains can serve different purposes. One is to simply allow rotation movement at a location away from your motor itself. Another purpose for gear trains is to “gear up” to increase rotational speed or to “gear down” to increase torque. Depending on what the gear train needs to accomplish, you need to find and place the appropriate gears! Keep reading to see how!

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Core Values Teamwork Challenges

amomentmaker

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COVID-19 has changed lives all over the world in many ways. We are very grateful that FIRST LEGO League will be able to continue this year. Obviously, though, the season this year is going to look very different for all teams.

One aspect of FIRST LEGO League that has always been fun is doing core values challenges within our teams. Core values challenges are great ways to build teamwork skills and grow closer as a team. However, social distancing makes it hard to participate in many of the standard ones. In this article, we will share with you 3 core values challenges that we came up with for our own team that can be completed virtually (such as over Zoom, Facetime, etc.) or in-person (with masks and social distancing of course!).

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LEGO Inspiration: Duplo Motorized Train

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In LEGO Inspiration today, we will show you what we found interesting in the current LEGO DUPLO train sets.

Even though these LEGO DUPLO sets are “geared” (haha) more for ages 2-5, these trains have features that help the next generation to learn about robotics. We really like that sets like these help kids (that might not even be old enough yet for FIRST LEGO League) to consider different ways to use “blocks” to tell a robot what to do, as well as learn about sensors. Maybe these sets will get all kids, girls and boys, interested in robotics!

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2019 Moment Maker Tip #11

amomentmaker

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Sometimes when EV3 robots are turning on, they glitch and get stuck in the “Starting” phase. It is important to turn on your robot early so you have time to fix this problem, should it happen.

To restart your EV3 without erasing all of the brick programs, follow these steps:

  1. Hold down the Back, Center, and Left buttons all at the same time.
  2. Wait until the screen goes blank before releasing the Back button.
  3. When the screen says “Starting” again, release the other two buttons.