Prop Cars: The Bull Shark

Lately in engineering, I have been working on building an RC car that is powered and pushed by a spinning propeller. The front narrows and curves downward to make the care more aerodynamic. The wide back allows the car to pull sharp turns at great speeds, and the spoilers provides the down-force needed to keep the car on the ground and steady. After building the whole car, I have named it he Bull Shark, which is a reference to Jak's dune buggy in the video game series of Jak and Daxter.

 

Here is a progression of building the Bull Shark.

 

It's finally ready to go :)

Prop Cars: The Bull Shark



NXT in Engineering

We just recently started on our robotics and coding unit in engineering and I am exceptionally excited. Mr. Olsen decided to start with Lego NXT robots, which I have never used, and they seem pretty basic an easy. After only one day, I built the basic robot which is "ready to rumble."

This is the robot I built

Here it is moving as we programmed it to watch for distance

Here it was programmed to pay attention to its surroundings

The Last 3 Weeks in Engineering

Lately we have been working on trusses and truss bridges. Once the class learned the math and science to trusses, we were challenged to build a bridge using only paper. Although our bridge could only hold fourth place, my team did well in "investing" to guess which bridge would work best. Below is a picture of our bridge.

(Overall, our bridge could only handle 18 magazines. The parallel structure was good, but the vertical attachment was weak and led to the bridge tilting over)

Follow Up weeks of 1-28 and 2-4

This is a follow up on the Seaperch activity as well as any engineering related activities I have been working on. For the Seaperch activity, my team completed out modifications for improvement on our sub a well as create a floatation device for our "challenges."

In physics, I was challenged to did a way to drop an egg from the second story without cracking the egg. We were given a limited amount of supplies to make a device to help with the challenge. Here is a picture of my sketch followed by an actual picture of the blimp-esque device.

(My submarine: The Magikarp)

(These are my bowies)

      (The egg is placed inside the cup while the aluminum foil provides both air resistance as a blimp AND a cushion to keep the egg from falling off the cup)

(Here is the original design of the egg carrier, which is not too different from the final product)

SUBMARINES

Lately, I have been working in a submarine with a group of classmates. After several weeks of planning and building, we have constructed the submarine and it is trade for testing. We have named it the MAGIKARP after a Pokemon. It is a small, orange fish, so we believed it was appropriate.

Videos will be uploaded soon.

Toying with Electric Currents

We have finally moved on to the topic I was looking most forward too, Electical Engineering. There is a lot of science and math that is involved with the genre of engineering. However, one day we had a substitue who had no lesson plan, so I took the initiative to "toy" with electricity, responsibly, ofcourse.

After some time of brainstorming, building and rebuilding, I came to my completed product: a miniature ferris wheel or fan powered by a 2V motor.