Our grade 7 students have been busy in our Maker Space designing, building and testing their CO2 cars. Students used their skills with our hand and power tools to actualize their designs in wood.

Students followed the STEMIA Design Process to ideate diverse creative solutions to the challenge. From this brainstorm, students selected the most promising solution and created thir projection drawings showing the top and side profiles. Students were then tasked with using the bandsaws, drill press and sanders to shape their wood into their vision. We completed the project by spray painting and using decoupage to add colour and graphics.

The final cars were then tested on the 65ft track set up in our gym at lunch where they raced head to head. We calculated the speed of the vehicles to be around 35 kilometers per hour. Our CO2 cars would get a speeding ticket if we were racing them on the street in our school zone!

Our first CO2 cars were fantastic and the students’ creativity and hard work really paid off. We can’t wait to see what our semester two students create.