Each of the seven students took a 10-minute turn. Some created spikes of more than 500 watts, but most could produce a sustained output of only 200 watts, which is equivalent to the power consumed by two 100-watt light bulbs. After the initial demonstration, Royce leads the students through a series of discussions and experiments about wind resistance, aerodynamics, friction, gears, chains, materials and anything else that goes into engineering an effective form of human-powered transport. Often experiments are done before one knows what the theory is. There's a lot of symbiotic interplay between the two.
Students seem to appreciate that approach.
In the experiments, he tells us how to do it, but not exactly how to do it. It's not something tedious like titrations in chemistry. You learn a lot in this lab. In a recent lab, Royce divided the class into two groups, one measuring the resistance of wheel bearings, another measuring the friction of objects sliding down a glass ramp. The group with the ramp soon had problems.