LAST Meeting April 27th

Instead of a journal entry here's our to do list for the final meeting

-replace twine and even it out
-garbage bag
-add wire to keep stable
-support wires?
HMS beagle
-sew velcro again
-find a better way to hold the wheels and motor
-replace tape
-batteries

Journal-
-fix blog
-components list
-final device page
-bios
-prototypes
-FAQs

Team Bio
-find it
-fill it out
-advisor bio

Costumes
-spray paint t-shirt

Poster
-get board
-red?

Anisha and Mo April 25th

At The Tech Shop





We made it to the Tech Shop tonight and things went fairly well. Some minor modifications were made. We replaced the trashbag becasue it got really beat up. We replaced the strings that attached the parachute to the device. It was decided to sew down a side of the velcro that was coming loose. On the underside of the device we decided to try and tape down the wires that were the primary defense against the wheels popping off. In doing so, we created a skid plate because we were afraid that the wires might stick out too much and catch on the bottom of the ramp and drag on the carpet, hindering and handicapping the process. The vehicle actually did not run at the first trial last weekend because the motor came out of the vehicle. That has been fixed. Right now the issue is getting the journals done.

Trial April 21st

Mo and Anisha Get Some More Quality Time ;)jk

We went to the trial and we tested our device for the final time before the Tech Challenge. Unfortunately as the device struck the carpeted padding at the bottom of the crater the wheels popped out of the sockets. We did not realize this until Anisha tried to drive the device aka clifford out of the box. When Anisha appeared to struggle it was assumed it was because of her general lack of competence in all things outside the realm of finger painting. We were surprised to find we were wrong. It turned out to be a mechanical failure. Unbeknownst to us at the time when we had removed the top part of the front loader, we had taken out the plastic supports that held the axle of the wheels into place on the frame. ya dig? When we removed the constraint the axel and therefore the wheels were literally unattached to the frame. The motor was attached to the wheels but the motor was attached in only a minor way to the frame. This meant that when drove out of the box the motor shifted out of position and got caught on the top of the frame. We knew we would be in for a late night at the next meeting fixing the problems. However, we were grateful that it happened now and not on the day of the Challenge itself.

Meeting April 20th

Yikes! The Tech Challenge is only a week way!!
Threat Level: Blellow (blue+yellow)
Morale: Patriotic
Rations: food for thought only

Final touches sort of... We adjusted the length of the strings and support frame because the judges noticed that our device was too big and didn't meet the drop height requirements. We discussed some of the non-device things we would have to get together over the next week like the poster and journal. It was a pretty low key meeting imho

Trial April 14th

Trial #3 o.O

Threat level: Jack Bauer
Morale: Rising
Rations: Waffle Fries

The third trial was a momentous one for us because we finally dropped our actual device from the top. It was a testament to the confidence we had in our frame and parachute. The trust may have been a little misplaced. Although the device didn't break into a million little pieces on impact, it did get stuck under the deflated parachute after it landed and wasn't able to free itself without intervention on the part of Cassie, the driver. After manually pulling the device out from underneath the trashbag shroud in which it was enveloped, the device, recently
christened The Beagle, had no problem making it to the top of the simulated Mars crater.
Success!

You Should Know....

The Office is an awesome show
ya better recognize

Meeting April 13th

Operation Beagle Freedom
threat level: vermillion
morale: sky-high
rations: obscene

This evening we worked on improving our preexisting design by adding supports to the dropping frame made out of old coat hangers. We also added a sort of "roof" to the frame so that when the parachute fell around it the device wouldn't be trapped inside.

That is all.

Trial April 7th

Trial-Round 2:Thriller in Manil--The Tech...
Threat Level: orange
morale: Ashwin was NOT at this trial and so it was a sad day
rations: filling

We measured sand out in water bottles equal to the weight of the box. We planned to drop these instead of our device because were weren't too confident in their abilities. We had two primary dropping devices which we wanted to test out. One was a low flat design like the top of a rectangular shipping box that had foam on the bottom, a foam frame, and a piece of cardboard over the top. The other device was simply a rectangular box with no padding on the outside but padding on the inside and the water bottles with the sand were safely wedged inside. We dropped both an concluded that we liked the lower flatter design because the rectangular box with no padding bounced upon impact after striking the floor on a corner.

Ashwin and Mo Meet- April 6th

Today Matthew and I met at my house to discuss the dropping aspect of the challenge. At the previous meeting we had gone down to the tech museum trial to test out some of our ideas. We weren't able to actually test our device by dropping it because CASSIE was too afraid that it would break. So the purpose of the meeting today was to work on a way to make sure our device survived the drop for the trial the next day. We decided to try and make a parachute out of an old garbage bag. We had talked about a parachute before but had never made a prototype for it. We decided to attach twine at the four corners and create a frame out of some coathangers to make sure the parachute opened correctly. In our test drops from the balcony it worked reasonably well but was a little unstable and tended to drift as it fell.

Trial March 31st

Trial Trial Trial Trial
threat level: nuclear
morale: delighted
rations: outrageously delicious

The trial today was a complete success! Our decive was able to climb up the crater wall easily and made it over the edge without too much trouble. We were surprised we managed to get what seemed like a working device on our first try. For the next meeting we wanted to focus on creating something to slow or protect the device. But for the day, we were satisfied with the result.

Friday March 30th

Day before trial #1
Threat level: imminent
Morale: ecstatic, nervous
Rations: meager

With the trial only a few hours away we realized that the trial wasn't all that far away and that we needed to try some of our theoretical ideas out. We wanted to go into the trial with something tangible to test we got working. By the end of the evening we had an cannibalized old remote control front loader with strips of velcro attached to the fron wheels. We chose to take off the back wheels to make the device's ascent over the edge of the cliff easier. We didn't have anything to slow the fall or protect the device yet but we were happy that we at least had something to test at the trial the next day.

Friday March 23rd

Today we finally decided to put some of our creative and innovative ideas into action. The first idea that we tried was the helicopter that Matthew brought in from a toy store. We had a vague plan for using the helicopter to carry a string or some part of the device up to the top of the simulated crater. Messing around with the helicopter proved to be the most interesting part of the meeting as well as the most fun until somebody got it stuck on the roof and we had to get it down. In the end we decided against using the helicopter in any part of the device simply because it was too hard to control. We were afraid we wouldn't be able to control it and keep it straight. It sure was fun to fly it around though.......

Friday March 16

Today we launched ourselves into working on the droppping aspect of the challenge. We had previously decided that the dropping and climbing could be approached as seperate problems. We further divided the dropping into two components, slowing down the device and cushioning the fall. Our first potential candidate for slowing down the device parachute. Being the pessimists that we are we decided to list potential problems first.

1)Not opening fully
2)Not being effective enough over a short 12ft drop
3)Since parachutes are characteristically flimsy, danger of ripping
4)Possibility of the device drifting off course
5)Parachute could fall on top of the device and trap it underneath

Then we talked about some potential solutions

1) Using an umbrella to keep the parachute open and stiff
2)Attaching the umbrella to box which contains the device, allowing the device to break down or run through the wall on impact
3)Pre-cut slits on the box so it would collapse on impact leaving the device to begin its ascent up the ramp unfettered
4)Fin.

We felt that we should pursue this venture a little more thoroughly , as such we decided to check out the local home depots and toystores for ideas and come back next week to put some ideas into action.

Team Meeting Friday March 9th

We started off the meeting playing with some Rokenbok tractors
We experimented with different rokenbok vehicles and their different capabilities however, though many of them are different in their components and elements they are all similar in the problems that define and restrict them. Que horrible! The first noticeable problem is that the Rokenboks are quite heavy. Also, the weight distribution wasn't exactly right and we weren't sure they would make it up the crater wall without tipping. Whether they had enough power to even get up the wall was also in question. Another difficulty was that they needed charger dock that needed to be close in proximity to communitcate with the device.



After we dismissed the Rokenbok idea we switched our area of focus onto the dropping part of the challenge. Using our knowledge of Physics, (Mo and Anisha's knowledge) we knew that all objects fall at the same acceleration of gravity (9.8 m/s/s)however, we know that in reality air friction affects lighter objects more. So in theory, if you dropped a bowling ball and a feather from a roof at the same time air friction would affect the feather more than the bowling ball which is why the ball hits the ground first. Because of this idea we knew that we could calculate the time our device would take to hit the landing zone as long as we knew the distance it would fall. Unfortunately we were thwarted by our lack of converting skillz.(yes,skillZ)We gave up.

Team Meeting on Friday 2/23/06

Today in our meeting we contined to brainstorm ideas. During our meeting we looked at previous years' challenges' devices to help us with the brainstorming. As we were looking at our devices we thought about:

• attaching velcro to the wheels of a vehicle to make it possible to go up the carpet.
• having a pulley that can somehow be thrown to the top of the crater as our device falls to the bottom of the crater. The pulley will then pull up the device.
  
• helicopters that can fly for as long as 10 minutes!

Second Team Meeting 2/9/07

For our second meeting we continued brainstorming. Matthew's dad remembered that Matthew, Anisha, and Ashwin had all done egg drops in their science classes. We were discussing this project because we thought it could help us with the part of the challenge when our device is released from 11 feet above the ground. In Matthew and Anisha's science classes the teacher allowed them only three pieces of paper and in Ashwin's class the teacher allowed him to use only environmentally friendly materials. Matthew and Anisha both had the idea of protecting their eggs with paper cones as well as parachutes and Ashwin decided to put his egg inside a grapefruit and protect the egg with jello. We talked in detail about the cone because it absorbs the impact of the fall of the egg and we thought this could be applied to our device in some way.

We also discussed their classmates' ideas as well. Many ended up using cones for their designs and some used boxes. Another student made tiny little tubes of paper and put them around the egg in a log cabin form. And another student also made tubes of paper and attached them around the egg with the ends of the tubes attached to the egg in a kind of sea urchin way. We continued our discussion for awhile and started thinking of ideas of how our own device could be protected during its own fall. Below our ideas of different ways to protect our device:

• bubble wrap
• a box with a door that could open when our device hits the ground
  
• parachute
• half inflated beach ball
• something that cracks open when it hits the ground

First Team Meeting 2/4/07

Our first meeting was spent brainstorming over dinner. We began by telling Cassie and Anisha about our time at the info clinic and answering any questions they had. Then we all looked over the diagrams in the guide booklet and discussed some ideas. Cassie's dad had recorded a video of the information clinic which was really helpful. It made explaining this year's challenge to everyone a lot easier.

Brainstorming

• padding for fall: water wings, balloon
• throw something over (winch)
• Question: How much of the vehicle has to be below the lip?
• grappling hooks (a lot)
• umbrella parachute

We also discussed an idea in which our device never touches the bottom of the crater but instead glides onto the platform after being released. A variation on this idea was to have something shoot out as the device was released and set off the sensor. We weren't sure if these ideas would be fitting with the "spirit of the challenge."

Information Clinic 1/27/07

Matthew and I went to the information clinic at the Tech to find out about this year's challenge. We were both glad to find out that this challenge is easier than last year. We were excited at the prospect of building a device that would have to survive a twelve foot drop. We made sure to pay close attention to the demonstration so that we could tell our teammates who weren't in attendence, Cassie and Anisha, what the challenge was going to be like. I was inspired by the NASA guy i dont remember his name maybe it was ricky or something but he said that like they always rely on remote control and the time delay between the moment they give the command and the device actually responded could take minutes. This made me think about creating a device where time wouldn't be such a factor. I came up with an idea for our device to remain stationary (and eliminate any problems with time delay) and shoot a projectile, tethered of course, up to the top with a weight on the end. We could then try and winch our way up to the top. Matthew and I left the Tech that day with
a few ideas in our mind, unable to wait to tell Cassie and Anisha all about it. :>