The race party project: A student-centered approach for teaching dynamics of mechanical systems

• This article presents a student-centered approach for teaching dynamics. • The Race Party challenge is utilized as a pedagogical project in this work. • Students have to design and build a minicar to run as fast as possible. • Dynamics analysis and performance of the minicar are described. • The implementation and implications of the project are discussed. This paper presents a pedagogical project based on a student-centered approach to teaching the dynamics of mechanical systems. For this purpose, the Race Party challenge is introduced, in which students, working in teams, are required to design, develop and build a minicar capable of traveling five meters on a horizontal surface as quickly as possible. The project is comprehensive and well-suited for teaching dynamics of machines and mechanisms, as it progresses from fundamental principles to practical applications, and covers the core aspects of dynamics of mechanical systems. The general procedure to approach the dynamics problems includes the discretization of the mechanical system, elaboration of the free-body diagrams, formulation of the equations of motion, as well as the analysis of the results. Finally, the implementation of the Race Party project at two Portuguese universities is presented, enabling an assessment of the effectiveness of the proposed student-centered approach to teaching dynamics of machinery. The outcomes collected show that the Race Party is an excellent pedagogical project for teaching the dynamics of mechanical systems.