I look at it this way: If you build the best car you get to win. If you cut corners, are lazy, figure you will finally work on the car 15 minutes before the race you get to be one of the cars sitting beside the track brocken. The track is a great judge of skill and design, placement demonstrates success. More is often learned by the races you do not win though.
The best argument why EA merits support is the fact that virtually no other school program mirrors real life like EA races do. You build something. If you build it correct, you prosper and win. If you slack, you wither and loose. EA is "sports for gearheads".
Every school/club has different ideas and reasons for their programs: I am focusing on groups of students learning to work together as a team to design, construct, and compete with an electric vehicle that represents their vision of an efficient electric kart. The teams get a chance to learn and engage in developing work ethics, responsibility, compromising, community involvement, and testing their theories. It is wonderful that there is more than one event the teams can go to experience success. They collect data from the events using simple measuring devices and analyze what worked or needs improvement. What they do on the track and in the lab mimics what successful scientists do every day. These events have opened doors for my students to explore schooling and career options they never even thought of before the rally. Here, they get to work with materials usually reserved for "big money" schools or universities. They get to put together something useful, and take ownership for their successes, failures, and apply them to real life. Also, they get a chance to improve on what they learned through a second level and use other materials such as composites or high-tech batteries. For some students, this program has made a difference between dropping out or dropping in.
Jim, Very well stated. Outside of the high tech batteries and composites (we build too many of cars to afford them for all 20 cars) I feel the same way.
Thanks for the input. It is interesting to see how different schools see this challenge from different angles. I cant count the number of times that I have heard that line about "EA is the only thing that kept students going to school" Its an amazing program that gives students skills that cannot be duplicated in any other manner.
electrathon as with any STEM related project gives students a hands on opportunity to use the knowledge from science and math classes. One aspect that I have used to win grants is that most STEM focus on the high GPA students. Robotics is a good example. We said that we had two groups of students at our school; the math/science students who are going to be engineers and never had a hands on opportunity in high school. The other group is the hand on shop type students who have never had a challengings math or science class. Although these two groups are attending the same school, they only see each other at lunch and P.E.
Putting these two groups together has a synergistic effect. We have one special needs, one at risk, 3 shops types and 8 academics who have never used tools or built anything. They are now a team and it is our goal to grow our group. This information got us $15,000 back in the 90's in So. Cal. With the help of Clark Beasley we built an electrathon, then went on to build 3 solar cars and 3 more electrathons. Look for STEM opportunities, that is the great buzz right now.
Use Electrathon to reinforce Science P=(W*Crr + 1/2 p *V2*CdA)*V this is the power calc for constant velocity
We teach plotting discharge curves (the effects of temp on battery perfromance), we do rolling resistance tests ( plot the effect of tire pressure on Crr), we are working on telemetry, we calc velocity based on RPM per volts, gear ratio, current draw.
this is all is STEM. Electrathon is a rolling science project.
We melt STEM and Shop students for a common cause.
