Last week, for my church, was Vacation Bible School.  Volunteers manned the stations and projector, youth helpers were overwhelmed by the craziness that is 3rd graders. I, myself, signed up for audio and visual, and am I ever glad I did.  (yes, this does tie into Lego)

On the first day of VBS I  learned that I would be doing photography.  The man I would work with, a particular Mr. Tucker, was a very kind person who did almost all of the church picture-taking.  He coached me through the picture-taking process and loaned me his best camera.  It turns out there’s more to it than just pressing the button.  (Gasp!)  I enjoyed my job thoroughly, however, and am convinced that at least one or two of my approx. 150 pictures weren’t terrible.  (Mr. Tucker was convinced that my average was higher than that.)

The next day Mr. Tucker showed me his generosity by giving printouts of every picture I had taken the previous day, as well as a disk copy.  I was very thankful.  But his generosity didn’t stop there, for the next day he duplicated the feat and brought a tin of vintage Legos.  ( I had told him earlier that I usualy only used cameras to take pictures of my Lego MOCs.)  You had better believe that I was extremely grateful. 

There was a story behind these Lego.  Mr. Tucker had bought a Znap set out of curiosity some time ago and loved it.  He then bought another Znap set and a Cyberslam set to expand his collection.   Eventually, however, he stopped playing with them.

About a year ago, disaster struck.  The Tucker’s house burned down.  And yet, despite this, the Lego survived, to be passed onto me.

When I looked in the tin I thought, at first, that it wasn’t Lego because I was not familiar with the Znap system.  But it was, two complete Znap sets, both with a 9-volt motor each.  They proved very fun two play with and easy to build.  The large pieces allow cool creations to come together very quickly.  They are fully compatible with the Technic system.

It also included the Cyberslam set Spyder Slayer.

This is a wonderful set!  The instructions tell you how to build a very fun creation full of playability and 3 configurations for the “Spyder”.  But it also has MOCing elements that are to die for:  Two rare technic figures, lots of teal, some purple, and a 9-volt motor!  Thank you, Mr. Tucker!

Made for BZPower BBC #59.

More pictures on MOCpages.

The Effect of Drive Type on the Efficiency of Output

Abstract

Lego© Technic builders need to know what drive is more efficient.  This experiment provides that information.  A hub gear, a belt drive, and a gear drive as well as motor- only (control group) were each used with a Lego© Power Functions motor in an apparatus built to press a key on a keyboard repeatedly.  The machine was turned on for 30 seconds with each drive, and the number of keystrokes in that time was recorded.  Ten trials were performed.  The average keystrokes per 30 seconds were as follows: chain drive=188.1; gear system=184.1; belt drive=92.25; motor.5.

            The belt drive proved unreliable and slipped off of the pulleys 3 times before the belt broke on the 5^th trial, preventing further trials.  The motor only proved most efficient, with chain drive in a close 2^nd.  The gear system was a few keystrokes behind chain drive.  This research could be very helpful to Lego Technic builders and may greatly improve custom creations.  The experiment is very specific to Lego, but the basic structure could be modified for other mediums.

I have taken off the rest of the science fair paper.  It was simply too long to fit comfortably here.

Now that the better part of my school obligations are over with I will be posting here more often.  I have a couple of MOCs to post as well as my Lego-based science project, as promised here.

I am also considering featuring other people’s creations here on my blog. There are a myriad of Lego blogs out there, however, I would be featuring only creations that impress your average, non-AFOL adult/parent.  (These creations would be tested on my parents.)  I might also post essays with helpful advice for newcomers to the online Lego community.  Leave a comment if you want me to extend my blog to include parent imppressers  and/or helpful essays. 

Over ‘n out, and stay tuned!

More pictures.

I have recently joined BZPower with the user name Lego Obsessionist.  For those of you who don’t know, BZPower is a Bionicle forum.

Lots of creations are coming!

More pictures on MOCpages.

In other news, Ben 10 is now available from Lego Shop @ Home.