Python Programming

Egg Drop Challenge

Total achievements earned: 25


Our design was two air packs surrounding the egg held together with tape. We slowed this down sigtnificantly with a parachute. A suggested achievement for next year would be length of flight time, awarded in steps like size and weight.






Brainstorming
-Create a sketch of one possible solution. Include labels.



-Create a sketch of another possible solution. Include labels.



-Create a sketch of a third possible solution. Include labels.



-Use a decision matrix to justify the approach you chose.




Material Prep
-Generate a list of materials required for build day.
-Document a plan to ensure materials are brought in on block day.




Build Achievements

Material Size:
(your egg is not included in the material size)
(air is ubiquitous and not included in material size. "Rare" commodities like helium are.)
-Your materials fit inside a printer paper box
-Your materials fit inside a shoe box

Material Weight:
(your egg is not included in material weight)
-Your materials weigh less than 500 grams.
-Your materials weigh less than 300 grams.
-Your materials weigh less than 200 grams.
-Your materials weigh less than 150 grams.
-Your materials weigh less than 100 grams.
-Your materials weigh less than 50 grams.


Drop Achievements

Drop Accuracy:
-You hit the butcher paper!
-You hit inside the third ring!
-You hit inside the second ring!

Egg Resilience:
-Your egg didn't break in any way! (awarded three times)
-Your egg didn't break in any way! (awarded three times)
-Your egg didn't break in any way! (awarded three times)


Calculation Achievements
-Describe an aspect of the event using arithmetic.
-Describe an aspect of the event using geometry.
-Describe an aspect of the event using algebra.
-Describe an aspect of the event using calculus.


In our class, our design did quite well, as well as Mia's design, which was much like our brainstorm #3.

Next time, I would try to make our design more accurate to hopefully get a bullseye. Maybe we could add adjustable wings to guide it depending on the wind.

Glider Challenge

Because I was absent for a majority of the assignment, I did not make a design myself. Instead, I took pictures of the day the gliders that were tested. Below, in Rafe's left hand is the winning design. It was a very simple paper airplane, yet it went the furthest.

Below is a full shot of everyone about to throw their gliders. It was a problem to throw them here because a draft was created by the walkway you can see below the poster.

Here is Henry's design. It did not work quite as well as Rafe's because the wings were so long that they weighed it down which made for poor long distance flight time.

Machine Capstone Project

Brainstorming Ideas: Here are a few brainstorming sketches; ideas of ways to approach the project.

The first is a bucket of all the marbles on a movable track that can dump each marble into its specific cup. Marbles are differentiated using a photoresistor near the bottom of the bucket where the marbles come out.

The second is a size separator where the marbles roll down a track and each falls into a different hole based on their size.

The third is a motor gate design, where each marble goes down the track separately and a gate guides it into its respective box. This was the design we were able to be successful with.

The fourth is a pneumatic gate design, exactly like the motor gate design, but using pneumatics instead of motors. Pneumatics is a motor system that uses air powered moving air instead of electricity for power. We chose this design originally, but switched to the motor design when we discovered there weren't enough parts for each group to do a pneumatic motor design.

Decision Matrix: Evaluate the four solution ideas using a decision matrix. Determine the best solution to the problem. Final Design Solution: See the blog post titled "Pneumatic Design" for a picture of our pneumatic design.

Design Modifications: At first, we were trying to make a gate system with all pneumatics, but because the whole class was trying to do that as well, it was extremely difficult to find enough parts for everyone. We discovered that we could get the same linear motion job done with motors, so we switched our whole project to this. An exception to the pneumatic requirement was made for our group because of this learning process we went through.

Final Design:

Our first picture is a where the marbles start-going over the magnet. This picks up the metal marbles and the adjacent gate pushes them into the basket. The marbles that aren't metal continue to roll into the gate, where the light and photoresistor examine them and give the reading to our program.

Next, the program pushes out the right gate for the marble it has read and the gate that is holding the marble opens. The marble then slides right into the basket, guided by the just opened gate.

Lastly, the wooden marbles roll into a basket at the end, as the program does not open a gate for them.

This is a shot of our project as a whole. The red walls are used to guide the marbles from falling off the track.



Our programs are shown above and below. Above is the cascading sequence (a subprogram) that decides which gate to open after the photoresistor has done its reading. Below is the main program that refers to the subprogram, called "pushers".

• Reflection: We successfully a machine that differentiated between five types of marbles.
• Our model went through multiple prototypes.
• As explained earlier, there were not enough parts for us to use pneumatics, so we switched to motors. These turned out to be easier to program.
• A problem we ran into was that the color sensor we used was very sensitive and seemed to vary its readings from day to day. Before each use we had to test our values and adjust accordingly, but the design worked quite well after the adjustments.
• Our other dilemma was getting it below 2 minutes. The machine we designed sorted 15 marbles in approximately 2 minutes and 25 seconds. We were given an exception for this, because motors work slower than pneumatics.
• Regarding our programming, we made a main program with a singular subprogram imbedded in it, as mentioned above. It was a challenge to program because neither of us had ever made such an intricate program before but we received help from both David Cuban and Austin VonPohle and were able to make a working program. Overall, we believe that we succeeded in making a working program with a efficient machine.

Pneumatic Design

This is our marble with numatics. There are not enough parts so we are going to change the numatics out for motors.

Marbles Prototype

Please Regrade These

Tennis Ball Game
Survival at Sea
Content is King -- link to class blog and extra credit?
3.1.1
3.1.7
Robopro 2- subprogram

*** I added pictures to every blog post that didn't previously have them.

Robopro Subprogram

This is a manipulation of the first Robopro post. We have now used the subprogram feature to accomplish the same task as before. The first picture is the main program while the second is our subprogram, which should look similar to the first Robopro post.

Machine Control Design 3.1.7 Part 1

This project asks us to make a machine of our choice. We chose the project where we are asked to make a machine that drops a chocolate chip onto a cookie. We chose this because it had the lowest level of software difficulty and we understand our strengths and weaknesses and we are not good at programming. We are however, decent at building contraptions because of what we learned during the first semester.

As we are taking initiative and making up the project we failed to complete in class at home, our team members solely include myself and Sarah Dobi. We are working on this project completely equally and both of us are each other's MVP. :)

Here are our two brainstorming possible solution sketches and our programing flowcharts, one is for the dropper and the other is for the conveyor belt.

Conclusion

1. What was the most difficult part of the problem? The most difficult part of the problem was the construction of our ideas because we had to use our creativity to construct a project out of nothing but commonplace household items.

2. List and describe two features that were not part of the design problem that could be addedd to improve your design. One device we could add would put each cookie individually into the packaging. Another innovation we could add would make the dropping device more claw-like and therefore more precise.

RoboPro Incrementing Variable Program

This is a basic program we created in RoboPro in class today. We discovered how to create an incrementing variable and control the start and stop of the program based on the variable's number.

To view a larger version of the image, simply click on it.

3.1.2 Flowcharting

Flowcharting is like using a map because you have to think about where you are (choose an n) and go from there--following the chart or the road you need. You use it as a tool, but there are still things you need to do from there.

State of the Union - Opt in

I watched the State of the Union, though a while ago.

Many of the themes of the speech resonated with our class. For instance, he specifically said that we need to have more engineers in America because we need to "catch up" with China and India.

The comparison to the space race was with the research in technology right now, particularly with forms of alternative energy, another overlying theme of his speech.

Race to the Top will replace the No Child Left Behind program. Both programs have what's best in mind for our nation's students, both focused of raising standards for teaching and learning.

The president included the Chilean miners story to show that Americans are out in the world solving problems and "doing big things" and that is exactly the kind of America Obama wants.

The president's chief speech writer, Jon Favreau, is the second youngest person to ever take the post of speechwriter. In ten years, I hope to be either still in school learning or working on an exciting job, traveling the world and solving modern engineering problems.

The speech was a good one, and it definitely encouraged me that he is so interested in future engineers and technologies, and, in particular, green energy.

activity 3.1.1 inputs and outputs

This activity, although called inputs and outputs, illustrated for us the difference between analog and digital signals in computers. A helpful way for me to think about this was with those words connotated to watches and clocks.

5. unchecked, zero, not present
6. checked, one, present
7. when you switch 3 and 2 the answers to five and six switch
9. 38 to 5000
11. 1718
12. 1655
14. by switching the red and black wires
15. the electromagnet turns the reed switch on
16. normally closed
18. light shining = closed photoresistor
19. the more light, the more resistance in the photoresistor
20. reverse programming
21. leave it alone

Conclusion Questions

1. Because the lines touch for one side of it and don't for the other, it clearly displays the concepts of normally open and normally closed.
2. After doing some research, I found that the computer is able to understand digital signals because it uses an A/D converter.
3. As something becomes warmer, the molecules move faster and so there is less resistance.

Content is King

I have a passion for sailing. I sail on our high school sailing team and plan on sailing in college.

While not directly a blog, I am personally familiar with my father's method of promoting himself online as a sailing coach. As the Union Tribune excerpt suggests, he has his own url: sailwell.us.

I don't really see myself blogging but if I had to it would probably be a general blog about whatever I feel like talking about.

Love the Metric System

(l) distance - m
(t) time - s
(m) mass - kg
(a) area - m^2
(v) velocity - m/s
(rho) density - kg/m^3
(g) gravity - m/s^2
(F) force - kgm/s^2
(E) energy - kgm^2/s^2
(P) power - kgm^2/s^3

Tennis Ball

The challenge was to have the tennis ball be passed to everyone in our team as fast as possible.

Criteria changed, but included that it had to be in the air and had to touch each team member. The biggest constraint was we had to come up with a plan in about two minutes. We had a lot of different plans.

One was to make a star shape with our hands and have the ball just touch the tip of our fingers at once. We tried to make a ramp, but it was hard to coordinate. The last plan we went with was our hands in a vertical stack that the ball would go through them as fast as possible while still meeting the criteria that it had to be in the air in between changing members. Some of our plans worked out, but we couldn't quite get the ramp to work as well as the other group could.

I think our star shape idea was the most innovative and worked well. I liked how well we were working together and trying out any idea that anyone came up with.

One thing I would change is try to innovate the vertical stack idea more, by trying to create a tube with our hands that the ball still touches, but isn't slowed down much by. Our team won sometimes and lost sometimes. To make the game better, I would want to make almost an obstacle course that each person had to go through making the game longer and chances for problem solving at every obstacle.

SHIPWRECKED

We did a sorting activity with different items that would be prioritized if we were ever shipwrecked. The task was to assign an order, from one to fifteen, of a given list of items that would be most helpful while lost at sea.

My top three items were the radio, the rope, and the seat cushion. My groups top three items were the water, the army rations, and the radio. My group convinced me that the water was important for survival, which made sense to me. The army rations similarly made sense as a source of food. The reason I liked the radio is because you could hear ships coming and go to them. My last three items were the rum, shark repellant, and maps last.

Our teams last three items were the same but chocolate substituted rum. This makes sense because my group decided rum can be used as a fuel. I had a hard time choosing an order for the mosquito netting and the plastic sheeting because I thought they could serve a similar purpose. My group ranked the radio in the top three like me, but like I mentioned, they managed to convince me that water is necessary for survival.

Our choices were very different from the Coast Guard choices. One huge difference is they thought the radio wouldn't be helpful because it wouldn't be able to pick up signal from far off ships. I would put the expert advice first because they had very good reasons for their choices and research and years of expertise to back it up. They are, indeed, the professionals.