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.