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 :-)