Makeshop Monday: Pointek's Puffmobiles!

Ella Ciarimboli, Catherine Berie and Ellie Schaub get ready
to race!

Each year, Mrs. Pointek's 6th grade does an awesome project called Puffmobiles. Students build cars that are able to harness the power of air flow. This year, Mrs. Pointek integrated a 3D design component and each team designed wheels using the Tinkercad program and those wheels were then printed on our Mojo 3D printer! The kids were awesome designers and really thought about what makes a good wheel. Mrs. Pointek and her kids were SUPER patient - the wheels took a long time to print! - and just did her races after we all got back from winter break. 

The kids did a really great job not just designing their wheels but thinking about how to best design their cars to take advantage of convection currents that would power their cars. I was so impressed with the final designs! The pictures I've included with this post are from the final day of races. Students had been testing their cars and then racing against each other in the days leading up to this final heat. The winners of the top honors for the final races were:

Zoe Luu, Macey Schriefer and Maria Babusci show off
their car!

1st place - Crazy Convection Crew 

                Fastest Driver - Keira Trosky 5.78 seconds

                Pit Crew - Emily Davis

2nd place - Mixtape Masters

                Fastest Driver - Erik Studebaker 7.53 seconds

                Pit Crew - Calvin Laurenson & Christian Cropper

3rd place - Unstable Air Mass Crew 

                Fastest Driver - Anna Neiss 8.50 seconds

                Pit Crew - Zoey Miller & Maggie Pappas

Mrs. Neuhaus times Ava Vacek and Cheyanne Snyder as
they move down the track

Over the next few weeks, I will interview these teams, along with other students from the class who did some great design work! Thank you again to all of the students for their hard work and to Mrs. Pointek for such an awesome project!!