Mechanical Design & Simple Machines
📋 What it is
Robots move using simple machines — levers, gears, wheels, and pulleys — combined into mechanisms.
🗣️ Coach says
Before the code, a robot needs a BODY that moves. Engineers build it from simple machines: gears change speed and force, levers multiply strength, wheels let it roll, pulleys lift. Combining these into a mechanism is mechanical design — the physical skeleton every robot needs.
🧠 Memory hook
Gears, levers, wheels, pulleys — simple machines combined make a robot move.
😂 Giggle
What do you call a robot that always takes the longest path?
A meander-bot!
😲 Whoa!
Gears can trade speed for strength: a tiny motor turning fast can, through the right gears, slowly lift something far heavier than itself.
✅ Quick check: Name one simple machine a robot might use to move, and what it does.
Say your answer out loud first — then reveal.
Any of: gears (change speed/force), levers (multiply force), wheels (rolling motion), or pulleys (lift) — combined into mechanisms.
Robots are built from combinations of simple machines.
🧪 Try it! (2 minutes)
Find a gear or lever on a real object (a bike, scissors, a bottle opener) and explain what it does.