Egg Drop challenge

Here are some pictures of our final design:

Some other designs we considered using were a parashute, wrapping our egg in padding, using just balloons to support our egg, and even making a bouncy ball around the egg. Some of the reasons we chose our design over these listed ones were availability of supplies and originality. When we looked for more balloons we couldn't find any place on the island that sold balloons with helium in them so we were limited to the two we had in class. Rafe knew about these bouncy ball sets you can buy but we couldn't find a palce that sold these. The reason we didn't try a parachute or padding is because we knew that half of the designs would be these, and we wanted ours to be different.

The reasons we chose the design we used is because it was easy to make, reliable, couldn't fall apart, and was original.

Pros: Original design, not used by any other group, not that big or bulky, easy to move around, the helium in the balloons made it light compared to designs of similar size. Can take out and replace the egg without destroying the design. Can eat afterwords

Cons: The popcorn we used as padding for our design could rot if we kept it out long enough, so we neede to use the design pretty soon after making it. The balloons can lose their helium over time, turning them from being useful stabilization defices to useless dead weight. The whole problem with our design seems to be its durability.

I think the egg drop challenge was a good activity to do because unlike glider challenge, it has a very clear goal and people can easily tell whether they had a good design or not, so the whole activity is much more satisfying. I also liked the achievement system because they offer clear goals that people can work to achieve. This challenge also offered more room for creative thinking when compared to some of the other challenges we have done in this class. I would recommend doing this challenge next year.

Glider Design Project

Day one: Looked up different glider design options on the internet, looked at flying squirell videos

Day two: Found a very successful glider design in a video on youtube, we decided to test this design so we build a few prototypes out of regular printer paper to see if we could get this design to work for ourselves. Glider prototype results: Glider design too heavy with regular printer paper, attmepting same design but with tissue paper.

Day 3: Attempted to build a full size version of our prototype, we made a design change involving the wing design. We chose not to cut off the backside of the wing in order to increase surface area, in exchange for aerodynamtics. When tested the glider was too unstable and adding wooden supports was required. This made the glider too heavy so we are discussing whether to change our glider design completely. Now we have to main designs that we are considering.

Day 4: We built a prototype for a new design for our glider, the printer paper version performed much better than our original design so we decided to build a tissue paper version in order to see how it would perform on a full size version. We now have two designs with different people supporting each one.

Day 5: After testing we have determined that rafe's design is the better design to use, unfortunatly someone else must have realized that because our finished plane was stolen, forcing us to rebuild our glider from scratch, luckily we had enough of our materials left to completely rebuild our glider.

Day 6: the day of our actual competition, our first design won the first challenge for distance travelled and our second design got 2nd for the hang time challenge. the reason i think our gliders didnt perform as well as we wanted them to is because we made them to light so they were more greatly affected by wind, i also think that tissue paper is too light of a material to make gliders from. It also didn't help that there was an abnormal amount of wind on the day we did the competition, which greatly affected the performance of all the gliders.

Robot Design Project

First I'm going to post some potential robot designes we made on graph paper:

Final design:

Design Pros: The complexity of our design ensures that little mistakes will be made while the machine is sorting marbles

Did not take up that much space compared to other robot designs in the class

Besides pistons, the lack of moving parts lowered the chance for something to go wrong.

Design cons: the heavy reliance on pneumatics made the tubing requirements very high for our project, and we probably could hae done it more efficiently.

Having so many pistons also made our machine somewhat slow, while it did make the 2 minute mark, it just barely did so

I think this activity was interesting because it showed me how important long-term planning and forward thinking are to a design process. I noticed this because we just kind of started building our machine without even knowing what the whole thing was going to look like in the end, which forced us the have to do some re-designes late in the process. This lack of planning is also what led to the messy look and ramshackle design of our robot, i think that if we had planned more in the beginnning then we could have mad our robot much more efficient and neater in it's design.

I do think our group was successful in the teamwork aspect of this project. This is because everyone got a chance to voice their ideas and everyone got some of their idea's implemented in the final robot design. I also think building something like this is much easier to do in a team because you get so many different ideas then if you were just working on it by yourself.

I think we were successful in this project because it completed all the specified goals of the project including, sorting fifteen marbles in under two minutes, being able to differentiate between marbles of different colors and materials, and being completely autonomous.

Flowchart design

The flowchart i created, it is for measuring planks of wood and then either discarding them, storing them, or cutting them depending on the objects length.

ROBO Pro subprogram

My first ROBO Pro program that uses the ROBO Pro subprogram feature. I like this feature because it allows you to clear up and organize your space so much more efficiently.

ROBO Pro program

The first program I made using the ROBO Pro software. I think the time we spent in class reviewing how to use the ROBO Pro software was very helpful and helped me to understand how to use the sofware.

MKS blog post

l (distance) = m
t (time) = s
m (mass) = kg
a (area) = length(meters) x width(meters) sign is meters squared
v (velocity) = m(meters)divided by time(seconds) m/s
(density) = mass(kg) divided by volume( length(m)x width(m)x height(m)) m/v
g (gravity) = -9.8 meters per second squared
F (force) = m(mass) x a(acceleration= meters per second per second m/s squared)F=MA
E (energy) = may have many different equations, most famous is Einstein's E = mc2, where E= rest mass energy
P (power) = work(work= force x distance x cosO) divided by time

Opt-In assignment- Super Bowl Ad

Out of all the ads that aired during the super bowl, my favorite one was the Darth Vader Volkswagen ad. Even though i did not watch the super bowl, this is my favorite ad simply because it involves Star Wars.

On average, 30 seconds of ad time during the 2011 Super Bowl cost around 3 millions U.S dollars, which means the 1:02 long Darth Vader commercial would have cost around 6 million U.S dollars to air.

A Volkswagen 2012 Passat, the car featured in the commercial, will cost around $20,590 USD, and the V6 model will cost around $32,950 USD. This means to make a profit on the commercial Volkswagen aired during the Superbowl they would need to sell at least around 291 basic models or around 182 V6 models.

With more than 53.3 million households watching the ad when it aired during the Superbowl and more than 32 millions views of the commercial on you tube, I think it is safe to say that Volkswagen will make a large profit on their investment on a Superbowl ad. I think this is a safe assumption because with more than 85 million people watching the ad, only 2-3.4% percent of the people who watched the ad need to buy one of the cars for them to make a profit. This isn't even taking into account the amount of people who will buy the car who did not watch the ad.

So, with these facts I think spending the 6 million dollars for a Superbowl ad was a good investment and a wise decision made by Volkswagen.

Content is King assignment

While I can't say that I have one favorite hobby, if I had to choose one of my hobbies to mention it would be how much I love to play Dungeons & Dragons. This is one of my favorite hobbies because I can play it with many of my friends at the same time and, unlike in video games which have limitations in what you can do in them, there are no limitations on what you can do in D&D, as long as you have the imagination for it.

There are many, many people and groups that have blogs on this subject, unfortunately none of the famous enough to be recognizable if mentioned. Also, I have noticed that instead of promoting the product, most of the blogs were instead set up to discuss different aspects of the game and discuss new ideas and ways of playing the game.

I don't think I can see myself blogging about any subject, it's not that I don't care about the subject that I could blog about, I just personally don't enjoy blogs. But, if I had to make a blog, it would probably be about some video game I play, or D&D

Input/Output Project

Our finished design for our machine

The finshed program for our project.

The first thing we decided to do was to run some tests on different parts of the robotics kits, starting with the switch. The switch is a standard switch with two outputs, a NO output and a NC output. The three is normally unchecked and when tested it resulted in a zero, with no voltage output. When using the two, its normally checked and when tested it gives a 1 in the testing window and it has a voltage. This means that switching between two and three switches the results of the test. Next we tested the potenteometer, which had values between 43 and 5000, and the NTC resistor had a value of 5000 and 1183 after it got heated up. With the outputs if you changed the output voltage the volume or speed of the product was also changed .
You can also change the CW to CCW on the motor by switching it's polarity. The reed switch is controlled by magnets so if you add an electromagnet the switch will be triggered, which switches it from a value of 0 to 1. The reed switch is also a closed program. The photoresistor and phototransistor are light sensitive sensors. When there is light, the photoresistor is closed, but when there is no light it is open. the phototransistor has less resistance when there it no light and more resistance when there is more light. The mini switch is open when there is a break in the circuit and is closed when there is a complete circuit.

3.1.1, Inputs and Outputs

5. Unchecked, zero, no voltage
6.chekced, one, there is voltage
7.switched, the only way to to turn it off is to hold down the switch, otherwise it is always on
9. 43-5000
11. 5000
12. 1183
13. The buzzer and motor can go slower or faster
14. the wiring connections can be switched to change the current's direction.
15. the reed switch is turned on by magnets.
16. the reed switch is open
18. depending on how close the lamp is the photoresistor sends different amounts of signal.
19. when the lamps light is exposed to the photoresistor the current is closed which turns it on.
20. unless the photoresistor is exposed to light it will normally be open.
21. if constantly exposed to light the photoresistor can be used as a closed digital input.

1. This shows what connections are closed and open and shows the 3 connection's static states.
2. The voltage would be chekced every second by a computer and would average out the highest and lowest values.
3. Itt becomes harder and harder to sned electrons through the resistor as the resistor heats up.

Lost at sea group activity.

I think it was interesting how different the coast gaurds list of most important survival equipment was from my own. I noticed that the main difference between the two was that mine was mainly focused on actually surviving on the raft, with enough food and water and fishing equipment to "wait it out", so to speak. On the other hand, the coast gaurd's recommended list focused mainly on getting rescued as fast as possible, mainly focusing on the mirror and the gasoline to signal for help[, so they wouldnt need to be on the raft for an extened amount of time. I think both approaches are interesting and both would have an equal chance of success.

Group tennis ball activity

The tennis ball activity we did on thursday was an interesting activity because it showed me how difficult it can be for groups of people to agree on anything. This was evident on the amount of arguing that took place during the activity, it also took our group a long time to agree on our initial design for our group. For example, some people wanted to pass it to eachother really fast but some others wantd to make a kind of shoot with our hands. I also noticed how each team took ideas from the other team and improved upon their designs, this is interesting because this meant we worked with the opposite team along with our own.All in all i think it was a fun activity that helped to teach us how to work together.