In my own words · Jackson, MI

Why I love cars

The four-wheeled Artemis Jr. prototype rover, topped with a solar array, driving across a grass field beside the Operations and Checkout Building. Real NASA photograph used on the Ellis Abel Learns "Why I Love Cars" page — read by families in Jackson, MI. — The four-wheeled Artemis Jr. prototype rover, topped with a solar array, driving across a grass field beside the Operations and Checkout Building. NASA/Dimitri Gerondidakis · Public domain

Thousands of parts and they all have to agree.
It turns fuel or charge into going somewhere.
When it makes a noise, the noise means something.

You can love cars in Jackson.

What it really is

A car converts stored energy into motion through a long chain of parts.

Three things to try today

Find where the energy goes in.
Find where the motion comes out.
Name three parts in between.

For the grown-up reading this

A child in Jackson, MI who loves cars is not unusual. A child in Jackson, MI who is told that loving cars is unusual — that is the problem. The Jackson, MI metro area has about 159,552 residents, ranking 273rd in the country.

Input, output, and the chain between. That framing works on any machine.

If the kid who loves this is a girl

Read what one popular teacher said to one little girl who took out the classroom trash without being asked — and what that girl did with the rest of her life.

Girls are great at math — Jackson, MI →