F1 In School’s Technology Challenge Excursion to Quantum (La Trobe University)

The preparation for the F1 Challenge is well underway again this year. This is a global competition in which students manufacture and race miniature F1 cars made of balsa wood and powered by compressed carbon dioxide cylinders. There are 3 teams participating, consisting of Year 8 and 9 students. The three teams are Team Kinetic (Max Vaughan, Darcy Tillbrook, Adam Dingli, Hamish McCartney and Jack Castwood-Pyper), Terminal Velocity (Joel Bright, Peter Russell and Will Clifton), and AeroThrust (Jeremy Mann, Tom Skehan, Liam Hunter and Aaron Arthur). As part of their preparations some of the team members visited Quantum at La Trobe University this week to begin to manufacture and test their car designs. This involved the students having a prepared design of the car using CAD (Computer aided design) software and then converting this to a suitable code to be manufactured on the CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machine at Quantum. The students have gained high level skills in using CAD software and highly advanced technology throughout this competition. Students develop measurement and precision skills, as the car has to be within specific weight and length guidelines.

As well as drilling their car design out of a balsa block the students had to sand and file away at their cars so that they were ready to race.

The students practiced their reaction times and completed speed and time tests racing their cars down the 20m track, gathering data to help assess the performance of their initial designs. One group managed to achieve a time of 1.2 Seconds which was excellent for their prototype model. Footage of one of these cars has been provided by Terminal Velocity and can be accessed by clicking the following link: Terminal Velocity at Quantum Victoria (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjXj-kRnC3Y&feature=em-share_video_user)

Jeremy Mann (Resource Manager, AeroThrust) made the following comment about the day, “Today was a very exciting day for our team, as we were at Quantum Victoria to manufacture our cars and test them. This was an excellent opportunity to learn about engineering and physics. Our first car prototype has now been built and has been tested. We used the testing track at Quantum to compare results and improve our design. This was conducted by Liam and Tom.”

The teams have gained excellent interpersonal skills and communication skills throughout this competition developing a marketing campaign, gaining their own sponsors and also developing their own media such as websites and social media.

Please access the following websites to follow the progress of St Bede’s F1 in Schools Teams:

http://aerothrustf1team.weebly.com.

http://terminalvelocityf1.com

www.teamkineticf1team.com

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