CAM: Jay’s Elastic Engine

CAM: Jay’s Elastic Engine

Opening Story: The 10-year-old tech genius Jay has a new plan! Working with his undersea friends, Jay recovers wasted materials underneath the water to create a new type of propellor engine; one that on land or sea, is sustainable and powerful for all called the Elastic Engine! But Jay can’t create the perfect sustainable engine alone. Work with Jay as a mechanic and construct the perfect STEAM yacht and STEAM racer to test the new engines and improve their performance in distance and power!

Mission: Construct a STEAM vehicle centered around the brand-new Elastic Engine and perform distance-based trials to calculate the best tension settings across all vehicles. There is a STEAM Yacht and STEAM Plane, each representing the sea and air areas to follow.

Activity Type: Brain Games

Group Size: Ideal for 16 elementary and middle school students

Description: Jay has enlisted your help in Jamrock Bay as an Automotive Engineer for an ambitious new project. To help his friend Odon and his community underwater, Jay has begun to collect discarded wastes and materials from humanity and restore them. When restoring them, Jay discovered a way to reassemble the materials to create a sustainable and efficient engine across land and sea.

After a session learning about the types of energy and forces that act on Elastic Energy, students distributed as individuals or teams of 2 will have 30 minutes to assemble a STEAM Vehicle to test the new Elastic Engine! If a team completes the assembly of the vehicle required within the 30-minute time limit, they will earn the full points (750) in the assembly portion. For every 2 minutes extra, students will have a late time reduction of 50 points.

After the assembly process finishes, students will have a 5-minute break to have the rules explained to them for the race portion. The students will place their STEAM vehicles at the starting line marked by the tape or band. One student will wind the propellor up as much as they can using tension and on the mark of an instructor, release the propellor, allowing the vehicle to accelerate and travel. Once the vehicle stops, no students may touch it until scores are marked. Instructors will use a measuring tape to measure the distance traveled in inches for each vehicle. This will continue for 4 additional rounds (in a team setting, the team members will take turns winding the engine). At the end of the experiments, the coaches will calculate the average for each team across all 5 trials. The team with the greatest distance traveled on average will win the maximum points with additional places decrementing as indicated. 

At the end of the CAM, individuals or teams will present their findings and conclusions to the coaches for points to affirm and reinforce the science learned behind the CAM.

Rules: The rules are as follows

• All students must listen to the instructions from Coaches at all times
• Students MUST keep their hands on their STEAM kits at all times.
  •  Attempting to sabotage or damage another person’s property will result in a warning
  • Damage inflicted on another person’s STEAM kit intentionally may result in the deduction of points or removal from the session
• During testing, students are not allowed to push their STEAM vehicle further physically
• During testing, students may not attempt to stop another individual’s vehicle from progressing
  • This will result in a yellow card and a point penalty
• During presentations in trivia, students must keep their eyes on their papers/whiteboards at all times
• Students may not use AI to answer trivia questions
• All students must follow additional Club League rules as outlined in STEAM eSports and your School or Organization’s policies