Wellington County 4-H members have taken on a challenging new club under the direction of June Switzer.
4-H is an organization that offers a series of clubs for participants’ ages nine to 21.
Switzer has started a Lego mechanics club, where 24 members are learning how things work and how to change an everyday item to make it bigger, louder, faster etc.
Members are given a Lego kit that consists of bricks, beams, plates, gears, elastics, axels, pegs, wheels, bushings, connectors, belts, pulleys, a motor and a remote.
The tasks are then started.
Members are to work through the tasks like reclining beach chairs, machines that drum beats, windshield wipers and drawbridges to understand why and how engineers designed things to work the way they do.
Near the end of the meeting to expand their understanding of basic mechanics members are given a challenge to change a machine that they have made.
The Mimosa 4-H Lego mechanics club gives members a high understanding of how machines work.
They are excited for more interesting and challenging activities throughout the duration of the meetings.
The 4-H members of Mimosa Lego engineering club had an early tractor pull in the basement of Mimosa Church.
The July 19 meeting was about how to assemble (with Lego kits) a pulling tractor.
The members were to first make a tractor that at least had to run.
With all the tractors going full throttle, Switzer told them how to make their vehicles have more pulling power by adding more gears.
The members had a very good learning experience with gears trying to make their tractor the slowest.
A competition was held. All the tractors were able to pull the first weight.
As more weight was added competitors were eliminated until the competition ended in a tie. The group decided to try a tractor pull.
Winner for slowest truck was Logan Howlett and Darby Smyth. Winner for pull off was Brandon Bartlett and he won against everyone that tried him.
Also tied for the weight pull was Amanda Smitts and Brandon Bartlett.
submitted by Julia Gagnon and Edwin Katerberg,
Wellington County 4-H
