On Tuesday, May 6th students of The YMCA Academy participated in a challenge that simulated a car crash safety system. After a brief presentation to describe the concepts, teams of students were asked to design and build “crumple zones” using a variety of simple materials such as straws, elastics and paper. These were tested using a miniature car running on a track into a wall to simulate a frontal collision. An accelerometer was used to measure how quickly the car came to a stop in order to assess how effective the crumple zones would be at protecting the car’s passengers.

Congratulations to Marco, Tegan, Emma and Mikaela who were our top team. They were able to reduce the rate of deceleration from 40g to 2.25g. (One “g” is the equivalent to the acceleration due to gravity, which is 9.81 meters per second squared.)

 

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May 6th, 2014 – Car Crash Design Challenge

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