Year 6 Maths

STEM project - Sphero Chariot Racing!

By Rupert

This semester, we did probably one of the most memorable parts of Year 6 - Sphero Chariot racing. It was a two-week process of planning, making prototypes, and making the final design, yet racing it was by far the most entertaining and enjoyable part. We made a large race track, probably 10 - 12 m long, and drove our chariots around it, with me with a record time of 18.47 seconds and also being 1st.

I remember the first time we tested our chariots was devastating. Every single one could barely move, and my one, in fact, was too heavy - creating an end to my first Sphero chariot ‘SC type: A’.

‘SC type: B’ was quite good. It was my 3rd fastest design, and kept me in good excitement for the final race, only until Monique finished hers.

‘SC type: C’ was worse than ‘type B’. It was too heavy.

‘SC type: D I’ and ‘SC type: D II’ were my final designs. They were also the ones that pushed me to first place. Fast and manoeuvrable, it had no problems coming around corners.

With marbles - 32.98 seconds.

Without marbles - 18.47 seconds.

‘SC type: E’ was the best at manoeuvring and accelerating, yet had a max speed much slower than ‘type: D’

Binary coding

Today in Maths, instead of engineering, our class learnt about binary code, how it works, how it has an effect, and how it might be useful. We also learnt about the binary code alphabet, we made secret messages to each other and had each other try to figure it out, once we found out the code we then turned the code into bracelets, but some of the codes were so long, we had to turn a bracelet into a belt, or even a maybe a skipping rope! Once we had learnt the basics of binary coding, we learnt about using numbers instead of just black and white, which was another way to show our code, 1 represented ‘on’ and ‘0’ represented off, for each letter, a specific code was made.

Sphero

This term for our topic, we have learnt about physical and theoretical engineering, using Lego Technic, a special type of Lego, to construct a “Chariot” for a Sphero .1 Over the course of about 2 weeks, we made, modified and prepared our chariots, following the engineering design process. At the very end of our project, our teachers rearranged our classroom to be somewhat of a race course, all the tables, chairs and materials were moved aside, to be out of the way. Some “chariots” did well, and some others failed, but, some people were lucky, like me, I came first in the time trials with just 16 seconds, when most people had around a minute, but second and third place, Rupert and Noah came close behind, with 32 seconds and 36 seconds.

By Aston Shevlin

1. Sphero, a small mechanical ball that is operated by an app, can also be used for coding and comes in many shapes and sizes.