[TECHNIC] What you learned from Lego

[Gee]

I got into Technic from a young age and it opened my mind to mechanisms. Although I never really took it any further by working on my own (real life) cars or doing an engineering degree, the fundamental understanding and interest in how stuff works stood me in good stead.

[ArcspacE]

Too many things to list and some have been mentioned already but I've always enjoyed Technic's refined simplicity and abstraction or fairly complex engineering solutions, which in many ways inspired my current profession - i.e. the 'art' of combining components together forming something greater than the sum of its parts.

As someone posted earlier - quite possibly one of the greatest toy for a young kid as far as creative thinking is concerned, as well as common sense in general

[Chilly]

Differential!

Just try to explain how it works, and you'll see it's difficult:-)

By using very few Lego pieces you can easily make a child understand perfectly what it does and how it works!

When we bought our first LandRover Defender we got a free half-day off-road course. The course started with looking at how the diffs work, using an 8880, but I had no idea what model it was at that time. Took me a while, but as soon as I'd worked it out I bought our first one. That's when I got back into Lego and bought more Technic sets. Then "he" wouldn't let me play with "his" 8880 so I had to buy another one for me.

Since then I've learned lots, but diffs will always be the "biggest" thing I learned.

[Azzepa]

I'm interested in how Technic taught you about this first one since there aren't any Technic sets with cyclic. Are you referring to a MOC?

Hem heh: Your website here begs to differ Blakbird:

Rotor System

A brand new rotor system was introduced which allowed the rotor to mimic the motion of a cyclic.

• The heart of the system is a spherical ball gear with 8 teeth and an axle slot running along the central axis. The part was rarely used except in a couple of helicopters and once as a CV joint.
  
• The 4 blade rotor has a central recess to allow insertion of the ball gear. There are 4 small pins evenly spaced around the inside of the recess which lock onto the gear, forcing the rotor to rotate with the gear, and therefore with the driving axle. Since the gear is spherical, the rotor can pivot freely on the other two axes (torsional constraint only).
  
• The final part of the rotor system is what I will call the swashplate. It has 4 equally spaced ball joints and a hollow center which snaps around the rotor sleeve. The idea is for the rotor to spin within this, but for the swashplate to remain stationary. It accomplishes this by grounding itself to the structure using one or more of the ball joints. One or more of the remaining ball joints can be coupled to a cyclic control to allow the rotor to tip both side-to-side and forward-back. This isn't quite how a real helicopter cyclic works with each blade changing pitch as it rotates, but it certainly gives the Technic helicopters a realistic feel. It was only included in 2 sets, both of them sweet.
  

[Milan]

When I got 8868 when I was 10, it was my first technic set, my father was impressed with the set, too. He then sat with me and started explaining how the power from the engine drives the wheels. Then he explaining how the engine itself works (pistons, rods, crankshaft). Since then my passion for LEGO and mechanics is growing. I can still remember his words exactly.

[Gee]

MAn, that's an awesome story of Father - Son interaction! I plan on doing the same with my lad, he's 4 at the mo and I got him building the pullback racer at Xmas.

[LegoMonkeyMan]

The most things I learned in school I had already learnt by playing with lego.

[unimog123]

I have learned so many things from lego technic since I got my first set about 5 years ago and when I started making my own models about 3 years ago.

First of which was patience and the pursuit of perfection or even just satisfaction.

Secondly it introduced to me the complexity of mechanisms, not only in lego technic models, but in everyday machines such as cars. And speaking of cars, my interest in mechanisms and moving parts brought me to the world of cars. Every single model I build, I like to think that it increases my chances to become an engineer in the future, building high performance vehicles.

Thirdly I learned that even though lego technic models don't have the power or speed really generate certain things like downforce, you still have to account for so many inside and outside forces. Such as weight distribution, power to weight, and efficiency. Even the ground clearance to make sure you don't get stuck on certain things in the outside world.

Fourthly and finally I learned about power/torque and speed and how to accomplish the best performance with certain setups, and what to look out for to achieve the best.

That's pretty much the basics of what I've learned from lego technic, and I think lego technic is an excellent way to express your interests creatively, and somewhat cheaply compared to other opportunities.

[kevman]

portal axles. What an interesting concept that you don't see much of in real life.

[JGW3000]

As my son says, "Gears! Gears! Gears!" - really, of course I knew about gears and transmitting power in different directions and different actions (I am an engineer, after all). But when you get hands-on and start fooling around with different gearing, transferring rotary motion to linear motion, cams, etc... then you really get an appreciation for mechanical devices.

[Hrafn]

I'd also add this: high quality and durability are worth paying for. Most of my childhood toys quickly fell apart or were discarded or sold because they had lost their limited play value. But I've saved all of my childhood Lego for my kids to play with - and almost all of it is in excellent condition. That's a useful lesson outside of Lego - when I need, say, a winter coat, it costs less in the long run to buy a good one initially instead of buying something cheaper that won't last.

[aol000xw]

First I learnt that going barefoot.is dangerous, then I understood several mechanical solutions (diffs were the most impressive when I was a child) and by extension that Da Vinci was a genius. I finally concluded that too much Lego is an oxymoron

But the greatest Lego lesson was spatial reasoning.