Technology: Self Driving Car Game Switches

Right now we are making switches to play a self driving car game. The picture above is my three cardboard switches.I just finished making mine. We had to make three unique switches where when you pull, push, or lift cardboard, tinfoil will touch another piece of tin foil which will light up a light. How the first one I made works is you push a tinfoil ball attached to a rubber band, the tinfoil ball swings and touches more tinfoil. How the second one I made works is when you lift a piece of cardboard, tinfoil on the other side goes down and touches another piece of tin foil. For my third switch, when you pull a cardboard handle, the tinfoil on the end moves backward and touches more tinfoil. I am really excited to play the car game!

Technology: Driverless Cars

In technology, we started learning about driverless cars. We learned the benefits and risks of them. One benefit is the blind can drive in them. Another benefit is the cars would be able to communicate with each other and that would cause less accidents. There would also be less traffic jams. A risk though is many people would lose their jobs as drivers. Also, if something unexpected occurs, the car might not be able to react and that might cause an accident. Overall, there are pros and cons to the future cars and I wonder when they are going to be on the roads. We are going to be building switches so we can play a car game in class and I am really excited!

Technology: Electricity, Periodic Table and Atoms

We have been learning about atoms and electricity recently. We even looked at an interactive periodic table. I didn’t know how the periodic table worked before but I learned that the Atomic number that a material is is actually how many protons that material has in an atom. We also learned about electroscopes. We got to test one out. You rub the pipe with a cloth and then put it close to a material. It causes the foil inside to move around. I really thought this was cool. I can’t wait to see what we do next.