For this activity you will need an NXT brick, a wire, an NXT proximity sensor, and computers running MINDSTORMS

1. Have student design an alarm box that will detect when a person approaches the box. If students want to use more than one proximity sensor or a different sensor as we...

Filter dirty water and then measure the turbidity of the water. We gave the students the decision to choose two of three of the following materials to put inside a cup with a hole in the bottom: cotton balls, gravel, and coffee filters. They used two of these materials and built a filter around the ...

This activity is an introduction to building with the NXT or RCX. Have the kids build a vehicle without motors that will roll down a ramp. The objective is to have the car roll as far s possible. Make sure to introduce concepts such as gravity, friction, and sturdy building with the legos.

To learn about application of electrical engineering, this lesson requires the students to build a game similar to Operation. An open circuit is created. One end is a wire maze made of a bare wire. The other end is a loop of bare wire attached to a popsicle stick. The object is to guide the loop...

In this activity, the students first choose an animal that they want to create and think about the types of motion that the animal does. Then, they approximte the animal's motion using gears and motors. This is a good way to use gears and motors in a situation other than a car. At the end, present y...

In this lesson, students will design and build a wheelchair that can hold a load about the size of a water bottle. Students will build their wheel chairs using the engineering design process and must follow specific design requirements.

This is part of the curriculum unit “Robot...

Acceleration is a physical concept that is difficult to understand, although you can feel
it when driving on a roller coaster. This sensor might help kids to realize how
acceleration can be quantified. It got its name, because it is made of a few LEGO pieces,
the RCX, and some n...

James Watt used the so-called "flyball governor" to regulate the speed of his steam engines (1787). It consists of two flyballs which are connected to the spindle by two flyball arms. The spindle of the governor is directly connected to the shaft of the steam engine. The flyballs move upward when th...

The aim of this project is to show the nonlinear dynamics of a vertically driven pendulum using Lego NXT. I use this toy in my Nonlinear Dynamics classroom.

Below you find building instructions and a video of the toy.

A pendulum with a fixed suspension point has two eq...

Today you won't have troubles to buy an electronic compass from the shelf. But, sometimes you want to understand - or as a teacher - to explain how the compass direction can be turned into digital information. This sensor got its name, because it is made of a few LEGO pieces, the RCX, a magnet, a li...