Preculmintaion Prep.

Today I explored parachutes and catapults (like the one I used yesterday). It was fun because when I used the catapult, my object, which was a small motor landed in the same spot several times, and it was successful. Then I took notes on Anna's catapulting. We figured if the object is at more of a vertical angle, it will be more accurate, than at a horizontal angle. We also took not on the difference between air-resistant objects, and non air-resistant objects.

Some questions I have:
1. What makes objects more or less air-resistant?

Mini Culmination Prep

Today Lena, Anna and I explored the earth launch lever (shown in picture.) We conducted several launch trials. The purpose of this is to deliver parks to a exact location. First you would put an object on one end, and then drop a bag to launch the object. The point is to make the object hit an exact location once it touches "mars" Anna and I measured from where to drop the bag. We setteled on 30' inches, and it worked, and the object hit the specified location! We didn't even hit a dead spot ever.

Universal Law of Gravitation

Thrust Structures

Today, Lucy, Hannah, and I worked with each other to create a "machine" that launches a plastic bottle up in the hair. First, we each created what we thought would work. After that, we tested our equipment. Lucy's creation worked the first few times, but them something went wrong afterwards. I tried mine, and it worked just fine. Next time, I would've have started with an idea rather than just jumping into something without thinking. That may have made my machine work even better.

Some Questions I have:
1. Why did Lucy's stop working after working so it worked so well at first?
2. Why do hot glue guns take so long to heat up?

Lego Robotics

Today, Le'Jayah and I learned about rover's and communication. It was fun to experiment with the rover and make it do tricks and such. First, we tried to make it go through the "gates" it worked and was pretty cool. Then, we experimented and tried to make the rover make a square, it was unsuccessful. Some struggels we encountered were when we tried to pick up rocks, and we couldn't figure out how to do that. Some questions I have are:
1. How do you make it move rocks?
2. What are some types of moves that can help on mars?

Remote Repairs

Today Jackie, Lucy, and I used skype in order to communicate and put objects together. Each of us took turns explaining how to put specific peices together, and then created an object to be used in outter space. It was fun, I really liked this expirement. It made me relize how important communication really is. Some struggles we encountered were hearing each other, and explaining objects. Some object's, I didn't know what to call them, because I had never had the exlain anything like that before.

Some questions I have are:

1. How do you determine name's for objects that don't really resemble anything?

Newton's Second Law

Africa Scores

Launching from the Moon

Today Lucy, Alaina, and I worked on Launching various materials to the yellow hook on the wall. Our budget was 4.7 million. Each launch costed $120,000 and each failure costed $22,000, due to loss of fuel. Our very first launch was just the straw and we only used 1 balloon. It was successful. Next we tried to launch a blue foam ball, and it failed. After that, all of ur launches failed, and we ended up not spending even close to 4.7 million. We used balloons to get up to the orange hook.

Some questions I have:
Why did sometimes the launch go about 12 inches, when 2 fully blown up balloon's we're connected?
How many balloons would it take to launch ALL the materials up the the "moon a.k.a the orange hook?"

Motion Detector Lab.

On friday we learned and experimented with motion detectors. Jackie, Gemma and I all measured motions together. Something interesting I learned that if you keep a constant, smooth speed, you can have zero accelartation and positive velocity. One struggle our group had was to keep the line smooth, it always would get bumpy or jagged! I learned that accelaration is speeding up and slowing down. I was interested when I found out that if you move toward the motion detectors, the distance is negative, and gave a negative slope. When you walk away from the motion detector, the distance is positive, and gives a positive slope.

One thing that confused me is;
Why does the line stay staight if your not moving at all? Why doesn't it just stop?

Africa Map

Soccer on the Moon

If you played soccer on the moon, obviously some changes would occur. Since the gravity is a lower force than on the earth, (1.6m/s2 on the moon) the soccer ball would move slower, and more force is needed to kick it. Therefor, it would be going slower on the moon. It might go farther because there is no air friction. If you kicked a soccer ball off the ground it would stay off the ground for longer than on earth due to the lower force of gravity. Since there is less gravity, it will move slower. The weight of the soccer ball will weigh less on the moon but have the same mass on all planets.

Robotix

Today we worked on Robotix and we made the robo in the video below. Some of the struggles we bumped into were these; First we made a machine that only bulldozed rocks, but the weels kept falling off, then we added a new way to put on wheels, and that worked a lot better. Sometimes the rocks went around the bull dozer and got stuck in the wheels, but we added sides, and that worked a lot better. Once the bulldozer hit the ground, the wheels went different ways, but we fixed it and put the wheels on a different way, and it worked a lot better!