Institute of Imagination Core activity
Core activity

Moon Buggies.

LEGO buggies, run down a ramp. Slope, speed and distance.

Type
Duration
5
Materials named
Makes named

What it is

This is the English Martyrs LEGO Ramps activity, settled 18 August 2026: families build LEGO vehicles and test them on cardboard ramps, exploring slope, speed and distance. The LEGO is a box of random pieces, plus components sorted into gratnels.

It is not the junk modelling vehicles. The 6 August reading was wrong. Junk modelling vehicles are the roll half of Nature in Motion, and a different activity from this one.

The ramp is foldable, and is being built for the day.

The example inspiration links it to nature through gravity.

Gravity is not biomimicry, and it gives a child nothing to change about the buggy they are building. Two things do: grip, where a tree frog's toe pads became a hexagonal wet-weather tyre tread and a gecko's foot became a dry gripper, and body shape, where drag is something a shape can reduce. Both are decisions made with junk and LEGO in hand. The biomimicry research has the photographs, and the caution that the boxfish behind the Mercedes-Benz Bionic turned out not to be low-drag after all.

Method

Materials

Items
box of random LEGOLEGO components in gratnels
Print
example inspiration printoutprint outs
Make
foldable ramp

Safety

Children
Adults
First aid

Notes

Linked activities

Not part of the activity record

Questions for you

1 · What goes on the print-outs?

Two print tasks exist. One carries the note Link to nature, gravity; the other names no subject at all.

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