Mini Culmination Prep- Day 6

On Tuesday, our group got together and talked about what worked well on Friday and what needed work. I wasn't there, so I was very interested to hear how it all went. After that, I helped maya a little bit with the robot. Then Lena and I tested out our notes on the lever and we perfected some of them. I think our group worked pretty well together although we didn't check in at the end, do I'm not sure how the rest of my group is feeling about the Mini Culmination

Mini Culmination Prep- Day 5

On Tuesday, Gillian and I played around with our rover the whole time. It would not go and comeback to the same place. We changed the battery, the motors, everything and we played with our program, but the rover was still being inconsistent. On tuesday in homework center, though, Bert and I problem solved. He suggested a tunnel and I decided it would be more logical to make a track/road thing. I used 5 rulers on each side and I taped them to the floor. this way, the rover can't go side to side, and it must come straight back to where it was before. It made me very happy!!

Mini Culmination Prep- Day 4

Today, Lena and I worked together again. Unfortunately, we found out that we have to launch 15 feet, not just 56 inches. This was not so great news for us. I was actually working with the rover again today, with Gillian, but Lena said that in order to make the pieces go 15 feet, we have to multiply our height measurement by 2 1/3 (2.33333) and our weight by 2. Apparently she tested this on a couple things and it worked. phew!! So, as for the rover. We got it to work perfectly!!!!!! we were so happy!! What we did, is because it turned on the way to the Mars base, we made one wheel go slower and one go faster on the way back and so it turned back and ended up in exactly the same place where it started. Yay!!!

Mini Culmination Prep- Day 3

On Friday, Lena and I took measurements of how high we had to drop the bag if we wanted certain things to go 56 inches from the board. We concluded that how high we dropped it was determined by how much surface area it had. We measured a motor, a wheel, a gray arm, 1/2 of a pincher/ grabber, a small gray connector, a 2 barred red arm, a dark gray triangular piece and a platform. We got very far. Then I helped Gillian try to get the rover to go straight be playing with the wheels and how far away they were from the body. It didn't work. We couldn't get the rover to go straight.

Mini Culmination Prep- Day 2

Today Kayla and I played around with a motor. Bert said it would probably be the heaviest thing we would have to launch, so we played around with it. we got it to land in the general vicinity of our launch pad pretty regularly. we had a margin of error of about 2 or 3 inches each way (which should be okay if we make our box big enough on our rover). I measured the weight of the bag, the height from which I dropped it and how far the motor went so that we could come back to it later. Kayla and I are experimenting with the weight of the object (because that makes the needed force on the opposite side of the lever bigger- I think) and the surface area because the air resistance effects how far the piece will go. hopefully we can get enough data about shapes and sizes of objects that we can figure out the different measurements during the mini culmination!

Mini Culmination Prep

Today our group sat and decided who was going to do what in the mini culmination, and who was going to prepare the different pieces for the M.C. I was working on the "Earth Launch Lever" station. What Kayla and I did was we used the little styrofoam pieces to keep the back side of the lever up. If we had a lighter piece, we had to position the lever so that the backside was tilted up more so there wasn't as much range of motion and the piece would go forward instead of up.

Bloopers!!!