Motat Pic - Steam Engine

 This is a steam engine , that was used to make factories and other things. 

MOTAT pictures

Picture from MOTAT

Josh MOTAT

This show how a wheel is connected to a motor cycle, it has two metal poles connected to each side of the wheel which is also connected to the steering wheel or the bike handle this also controls the steering.  

Isabelle MOTAT

I decided to explain how these snow treads maximise friction on this tractor. The treads add friction by creating more resistance on a smooth surface such as snow or ice. Because the snow treads grip to the snow, there is more friction therefore the tractor doesn't slip and slide about. The treads are like a conveyor belt, so when the wheels move the treads move with them. 

MOTAT

How breaks work

Breaks work by friction.
When you step on the break, the wheels starts to make friction with the trail by the wheels rubbing on the trail, and that makes the train stop.
With friction the train is hard to move because wheels makes it have grip in them.
Even if the train is on full speed, with a lot of big friction, it is possible for the train to stop as soon as possible.
Wheels is connected to other bits in the train, so if you step on break, wheels stop because it is connected to bits around the train.

MOTAT

I chose to explain how friction maximises with snow treads on vehicle /machine. Snow treads are used on the tyres of a vehicle to give it grip/friction/resistance to a slippery /mushy surface. The tread has sharp metal that grips into the snow as it slowly turns around the wheels. Because of the extra grip the tyres are closer to the ground and are able to turn slowly helping get the friction needed. 



By Hannah

Lucy's Motat Post

 

This is a picture of the mini kart we made at MOTAT.
I am mainly focusing on the friction between different objects and surfaces. We decided to make it out of meccano as we thought there would be just enough friction. 
As you can see it's quite a simple design, it's the base (or a 'skeleton') of a go kart. So it would need to be altered if someone were to sit in it.
                                                           

 

 Our car went quite far. We first tested it out and it went really slowly. So we loosened the wheels slightly and we ended up winning our race. It went slower because the wheels were too tight. And if something is tight it creates lots of friction. We wanted as little friction as possible. In the pictures you can easily see the axle going through the wheels and if you look carefully (in the top photo and we attached something to the axle on both sides of the wheels so it wouldn't jiggle around.
If the wheels were loose then the whole kart would go out of control and go off track. But if the wheels were too tight then the kart wouldn't go very far as there would be too much friction (as explained before). So you need to make sure you have the exact amount of tightness and looseness.

By Lucy :-)

 

 

Tali- Motat

MOTAT

This is a picture of the cart we made at motat:

 

I am mainly focusing on the maximizing and minimizing of friction on the vehicle.
We made our cart out of meccano we thought this will give us just enough friction.
We attached  the wheels to the axle and put some  pieces on the side of the wheels so we could create more friction and that way they would not fall off.


When we first tried out our cart it did not go very fast because we had the wheels on  tight so there was too much friction.

So we decided we needed to loosen the wheels it ended up going faster but the only problem with our cart was it had no control too little friction!

By Tali