The Brakeless Go-Cart

A plan + some salvaged parts + a lot of time = Go-Cart madness

R and J made a go-cart...without brakes. Whaaaat?!? What do you mean there are no brakes?

"Mom, we haven't gotten around to that. Don't worry...I'll wear a helmet."

Oh, brother.

Daddy went first...

R tried it...

I thought: how bad could it be?!? But I neglected to ask for a tutorial and promptly - right after this shot was taken - ended up ramming into the curb and flying off the cart.

I survived, unscathed. Mostly unscathed. That was enough for me.

LEGO Mindstorms: The Tritimer {by R}

This is my Tritimer. It is a start/stop timer that counts minutes. As you can see it is built out of Lego Mindstorms.

I called it the 'Tritimer' because it has three sections in it that slow down the speed so that it will take exactly one minute to spin around a full circle.

I have used no programing in this build because we can't get the programing software on our computer. I have used the trial and error method with my mom as timer. If it didn't go correctly, I would just tweak the gears so that it would.

Making Memories: Fossil-Hunting {by R}

  Fossil Hunting 

by R.

I woke up this morning on a regular day in summer. My mom told us to take good pictures but I did not know what I was supposed to take pictures of. Then my dad told us we were going fossil hunting. We were excited to get back on making our rock collection bigger.

My teacher, Mr. S. sent my dad some fossil field trip places to look at.

The first stop we went to is a donut store for breakfast. I got a filled, my brother got a coconut, my dad got a maple bar, and we shared an apple fritter.

Then  we drove by a vertical fault formation. All the other exposed walls had lines that were horizontal but this few square feet of rock were vertical. We would of stopped to check it out but there was no place to park the car.

Then we kept on driving until we came to the third stop. It was a huge hill that overlooked the whole Arroyo Seco watershed. There we found a great view and a few deer on the road. All of them were bucks.

On our fourth stop we came to a spot in the driveway where we can see these rock cliffs that came right out of the ground. They were huge! We all said 'whoa!' as it said in parentheses on the field trip paper.

Next, we came to a stop at the Carmel Valley Road. We turned right on Arroyo Seco Road as the field trip paper said. Then we kept on driving until we came to this park. They said we had to pay ten dollars to get in. My dad didn't have any cash so the lady said to go the country store and to buy something there. So we turned around and kept on driving. We couldn't find the store so we went back to the lady. She said that it is three miles out. So my dad set his odometer and we set out. When we found the store we got ten dollars, some good advice, and Gatorade. Then we went back to the lady and paid her.

In the middle of our hike we noticed that we were going in the wrong direction. The field trip paper said to go east and that was to turn left on the intersection. To make the ten dollars not for nothing, we spent some time in the river looking for cool river rocks.

Then we drove to the intersection and went left this time. We finally came to the fossil place we were looking for. When we looked for fossils we tons of clams and scallops. We collected a lot of clams and scallops and one fish.















We went home tired and with a lot of fossils.