Step 1: Golf Ball Rolls down Set of Inclined Planes
Mechanical Advantage = 2.4
Step 2: Golf Ball Rolls down a Screw
Mechanical Advantage = 3.24
Step 3: Golf Ball Rolls down a Second Inclined Plane
Mechanical Advantage = 2.6
Step 4: Golf Ball Falls into Cup that is attached to a Pulley System
Mechanical Advantage = 1
Step 5: Pulley Raises a Lever with a Car on it
Mechanical Advantage = 1.24
Step 6: Raised Lever allows car to go over a wedge and down an Inclined Plane
Mechanical Advantage = 4.7
Step 7: Car Hits Rolled up Sign
Force Required to make Sign fall = 1.7 Newtons
Step 8: Car connected to Nerf Gun falls off table and gives enough force for the Nerf Gun to Fire
For required to shoot gun = 5 Newtons
Step 9: Rolled up Sign falls on Lever making other side of Lever go up
Mechanical Advantage = 1.7
Step 10: Confetti in cup on other side of lever shoots upward
Potential and Kinetic Energy of Confetti = 0.00235 Joules
What I Learned:
During my first project at Stem Marin, I learned a lot. Looking back on my team's
progress, we built most of our project on the last four
days. I believe this is because in the days prior, my team and I failed quite a number
of times and instead of learning from our mistakes
and progress, we kept doing the same thing repeatedly. In the end, this actually really
helped us learn to overcome challenges and not to
dwell on failure. We got so behind that we started to forget about everything but the
project and developed great team skills. Coming into the next project, I believe I can use these skills to create an amazing project.
Terms:
Inclined Plane: A flat surface that is angled. Example: a ramp
Screw: an inclined plane that goes around in a circle. Example: a twisty slide
Pulley: A wheel on an axel that a rope goes through
Lever: A bar or plank on a fixed point called a fulcrum. Example: see saw, hammer
Wedge: Something that holds something else in place. Example: door jam. Also, something that is used to split something else apart. Example: Knife
Newton: The standard unit measurement for force
Joule: The standard unit measurement for energy
Potential Energy: Energy an object has stored because of its position. Example: A ball that you hold above the ground has potential energy because if you let go of it, it will move.
Kinetic Energy: Energy an object has due to motion. The reason why our Kinetic and Potential energy is the same is because all of its potential energy theoretically should turn to kinetic energy.
Mechanical Advantage: How much easier a machine makes something.
Work Log:
Day 1: We started designing our project. Our first physical building step was cutting our main board of wood in half. We then started shaping pieces of wood to hold the two pieces together.
Day 2: We started using power tools and screws to attach our boards together. Once they were together we proceeded to nail in our first step which was our first set of two inclined planes.
Day 3: We organized all of the supplies we brought from home and began brainstorming places for them to be used.
Day 4: We went outside to scavenge for aluminum cans in trash cans around campus. when we returned to the classroom we began cutting the cans to construct our screw step of the project.
Day 5:We slowly started putting together the screw. We also started working on constructing a pulley which was designed to hit a lever.
Days 6-8: We continue trying to construct a pulley that will consistently hit a lever.We experiment with different methods of using the pulley. We eventually give up on it and brainstorm new ideas for the pulley system.
Day 9: We come up with a final plan for our pulley and put it into action. We decided to have our ball roll down an inclined plane, go down a pulley which would then pull a lever causing a car to roll down and pull the trigger of our nerf gun which was our final step.
Day 10: But we were not finished yet we were still missing two steps that we had to incorporate into our machine somewhere. So we brainstormed two new steps that would complete our machine.
Day 11: We put together our last two steps which were adding the piece of paper that gets knocked by our car onto a lever filled with confetti. After it was together we began our calculations and schematics work.