Fling Machine Reflection

Austin and I worked well together and decided on a relatively simple design for the machine - two corks bound together by a rubber band and a stirrer stick wedged in between. We held a cotton ball at the top of the stick, pulled back, and launched. At first, we thought we'd have a foil "shelf" at the top of the stick for the cotton to sit on, but it ended up falling off and our machine worked better without it anyway. Our mean distance was 6 feet 2.74 in, or about 75 in, with a standard deviation of 18.2 in. 

When we designed our machine, we didn't know that we could just throw the cotton ball. I still don't really think that's fair, because that's not a fling machine - there's no flinging, it's just a weighted cotton ball and arm power. However, if we were to redesign, we would eliminate the stirrer stick and just throw the corks with the cotton ball and the rubber band. We tested this afterwards and we know that it can travel really far.

Overall, I think our team did a good job. We used the materials well and built a pretty nice fling machine that launched the cotton ball relatively far. I really enjoyed the project and I hope we get to do more like it.

 

Kaleidoscope

Unit Conversion Reflection

Having a common set of units makes it easier to convey measurements to people in different countries or fields. For example, a meter is the same length all around the world. It's important for engineers and designers to be able to convert between different systems so that they can share their designs with other people in a standardized way and have repeatable measurements.

Overall, I thought the project was okay. I like the idea of teaching a lesson in groups, but I wish we had a more interesting or broad topic. I didn't like how every group had to talk about unit conversion; by the end the presentations were really repetitive despite the fun parts.