Lego Mindstorm Tug a War

This week in engineering we had a challenge to make a car out of Lego Mindstorm pieces to compete against other teams. My group was Daniel, Dylan (Baker), Dylan (Lektorich), and I. Our car ended up being able to beat Marshall's car, but could not defeat either Tommy's, or Allistair's, putting us around 3rd or 4th place in the classroom. Here are some pictures:

(Unfortunately our first iteration was taken apart so this is a replica)

+We had a driveshaft that spooled the string that helped to accelerate the game

-The spool sometimes worked against us

+The 3 wheels looked cool

-It was not heavy enough to really pull hard enough to beat many cars

+The big wheels had some good traction

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Ping Pong Ball Bridge

Today in engineering we had a design build challenge to build a way to get a ping pong ball across a two foot gap using a system of currency, with only 12 thousand dollars and 18 minutes. I was in a group with Marshall Alldredge and Caleb Woodson. Our idea was to build a bridge using two "stringers" of straws stuck into each other, propped up on one side by a cup. It worked really well on the first try, and was so cheap that we ended up decorating it with our leftover money.

Here are some pictures:

Superbowl Commercial

Superbowl Commercial

This Superbowl, even though the Broncos were being beat into the ground by the Seahawks, a ton of really funny commercials were aired. My favorite one of all of them would definitely be the Radioshack's 80's commercial, where they get a call from the 80's, and characters retake the store. 

To air a Superbowl commercial, it costs 4 million per thirty seconds, making this one cost around 8 million, not factoring in the cost of actors, equipment, song rights, and a studio.To break even on the cost of airing, they would have to sell around forty thousand phones at 200 dollars each, and probably around 45 thousand to pay for the complete costs.

This is the commercial that they aired.

Lego Mindstorm Cars

This week in engineering we made cars with the Lego Mindstorm kits. They were supposed to go around a U shaped track without any help from us. MY group was Mike Mulvey, Tommy Hardy and I, and we decided to make a tricycle based car. The biggest problem that we had was making it turn, but after Tommy worked on it for a day or two it finally started to work. In the end, it went around the track perfectly. While Tommy was working on programming it, Mulvey and I put a rubber band launcher on the top just in case we get attacked on the course.

This is our car without the brick

This is an action shot of Tommy working on it

This is our brainstorm of car designs.

Folder Bridge Building Challenge

Manilla Folder Bridge Challenge Part 1

Criteria and Constraints

• Use two manilla folders to make a bridge that can hold up some magazines
• You can only use a foot of tape
• There can not be more than 3 layers on top of each other at once
• There can  not be two parallel structures attached to each other
• Has to be at least 22 inches long, and between two tables

Our design was a big tube of folder taped together, with little folder triangles stuffed inside of it for support. It worked pretty well when we had enough tape to keep it up.

We never got a picture of the the bridge holding up the magazines on it own, but it held for about 3 seconds before collapsing

Manilla Bridge Building Challenge Part 2

We got a picture of the bridge standing on it's own, now with 3 feet of tape. It stood on its own for a really long time, until we took it off.

Centroids on Irregular Objects

Today in engineering we worked on centroids, and hoe to find the center of balance on weird looking objects. I found the centroid on multiple objects but this one was the weirdest looking. I'm not really sure if it is a banana, a croissant, or a shrimp but I found the center of balance on it using the 3 plumbob method.

Marble Drop Challenge

Criteria:
To build a mechanism that moves a marble into a cup once you drop it off of a table. Whoever gets it in from the longest distance wins
Constraints:
2 feet of tape, 14 straws, 3 cups, and a marble. The Marble has to be pushed off of the table and not placed in the cup
Results:
Caleb's group got first place, our group got second, and Tommy's got third.