My Brownies and Juniors recently finished their third design challenge for Think Like an Engineer. I'm usually one to stick pretty close to the VTK plans, but in this case, none of the offered projects that we hadn't done really excited me. I had planned to do the Daisy Roller Coaster badge when Covid shut us down in 2020, so I decided to go with that.
I divided the girls into groups of three and gave them each a pool noodle which I had cut in half the long way and taped into one long piece and a small plastic ball. We talked about how roller coasters worked, with the energy coming from the cars being dragged to the top of the hill, and that after release there is no added power.
I had some chairs, boxes, and books a a available to add height and told the girls to design a track that would get the marble all the way to the end, and to try to make it interesting.
This group worked for almost an hour.
