ParkRNDL
03-20-2006, 06:43 PM
Okay, has anyone ever seen one of these before?
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/rwurtz/images/handgen.jpg
Well, I teach middle school Reading, and on Friday during my free period, I wandered past the science lab to see several groups of kids doing a lab project. Each group had one of these fishing-reel looking gizmos, and a bunch of test wires with alligator clips, and a lightbulb or two, and a few other science-fair-electrical-circuit-project type items. I asked one group what the fishing reel gizmo was, and a kid showed me: He hooked the alligator clips to the lightbulb socket leads and cranked the handle and the bulb lit up. COOOOOOL! A hand generator! Wonder how much voltage it puts out... "Wait here one second," I said. I always have a few miscellaneous slot cars in my classroom. I came back with a Tjet and said, "Watch this..." I hooked the clips to the Tjet pickup shoes and cranked the handle. Voila, the wheels spun. Ooohs and aaaahs from the kids.
Then the one kid says, "Run it across the table!" I didn't think I could, because of the way the clips were hooked to the shoes, but he diddled with them for two seconds and I could get the car to scoot around the table on its rear wheels like a pet on a leash.
Long story short: The science teacher lady said her kids would get a kick out of running cars off these generators, so I borrowed one and brought it home and hooked it to some old LL track. I recently picked up a couple of LL sets with that useless hardwired terminal track, so with a little creative Dremeling and reconnecting, I had the lanes isolated. Now you can hook up one of these hand generators to each lane. One set of alligator clips goes to what used to be the power pack terminals, the other set goes to a pair of wires from under the track. I set up an oval--33 inch straights with lane-change tracks to keep the lane lengths even. You have to crank like mad to get a Tjet around, but a 440 or LL shoots around like nothing. Tomorrow, the kids are finishing their lesson on circuits, and I'm gonna set the track up for them so they can race the cars around using the hand generators. Should be fun... :D
(Interesting side note: Inside these generators are just can motors with lots of gears. I hooked one to a track that already was hooked to power, and pulled the trigger on a controller, and the crank handle started spinning...)
--rick
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/rwurtz/images/handgen.jpg
Well, I teach middle school Reading, and on Friday during my free period, I wandered past the science lab to see several groups of kids doing a lab project. Each group had one of these fishing-reel looking gizmos, and a bunch of test wires with alligator clips, and a lightbulb or two, and a few other science-fair-electrical-circuit-project type items. I asked one group what the fishing reel gizmo was, and a kid showed me: He hooked the alligator clips to the lightbulb socket leads and cranked the handle and the bulb lit up. COOOOOOL! A hand generator! Wonder how much voltage it puts out... "Wait here one second," I said. I always have a few miscellaneous slot cars in my classroom. I came back with a Tjet and said, "Watch this..." I hooked the clips to the Tjet pickup shoes and cranked the handle. Voila, the wheels spun. Ooohs and aaaahs from the kids.
Then the one kid says, "Run it across the table!" I didn't think I could, because of the way the clips were hooked to the shoes, but he diddled with them for two seconds and I could get the car to scoot around the table on its rear wheels like a pet on a leash.
Long story short: The science teacher lady said her kids would get a kick out of running cars off these generators, so I borrowed one and brought it home and hooked it to some old LL track. I recently picked up a couple of LL sets with that useless hardwired terminal track, so with a little creative Dremeling and reconnecting, I had the lanes isolated. Now you can hook up one of these hand generators to each lane. One set of alligator clips goes to what used to be the power pack terminals, the other set goes to a pair of wires from under the track. I set up an oval--33 inch straights with lane-change tracks to keep the lane lengths even. You have to crank like mad to get a Tjet around, but a 440 or LL shoots around like nothing. Tomorrow, the kids are finishing their lesson on circuits, and I'm gonna set the track up for them so they can race the cars around using the hand generators. Should be fun... :D
(Interesting side note: Inside these generators are just can motors with lots of gears. I hooked one to a track that already was hooked to power, and pulled the trigger on a controller, and the crank handle started spinning...)
--rick