From the start, when my teacher first announced that we would do this project, I’d had a problem. My schedule was so packed, that I wondered if I’d ever be able to work on my project.
Due to this unfortunate dilemma, I was only able to work on this project on the weekends. And there were only about 4 weekends in which I could work on this project. That was my first problem. My second was that I had a baby brother who destroyed my project twice. And third, was that I needed materials, which I could not easily find anywhere.
I had a whole list of problems that kept on going. Luckily, every problem was solved, some of them not as simply as others. But they were all solved, and soon, my list of problems got very short.
By January 19, I was almost done with my project. The best part was, I had till February 8th to turn it in! That was 20 days, or roughly 3 weeks. All I had to so now, was videotape the project. I didn’t realize how hard that would be till I actually started.
One of my most complicated steps occurs when Jenga pieces knock into a ball which then knocks into a wheel. That wheel is supposed to go under a chair and yank a Jenga piece off from on top of the chair and, as a result, let a marble travel down a path. But the wheel didn’t move enough when knocked into. So the Jenga piece didn’t budge. This was very frustrated. Finally, after a whole weekend passed, I found a solution. This solution came when I mounted the wheel on top of a small block so it could go down a ramp and gain more speed. But even after that, while recording, the wheel didn’t go down the ramp, or the ramp blocked the ball from knocking into the wheel. Once I found the solution to this, which was getting a different ramp that was a bit flatter, I realized the importance of having a plan to look at. Even after this, about 2 days later. I scrapped this whole step and replaced it with a sea saw, I still wished I had a plan too look at. Because by then, I definitely wasted that I hadn’t spent so much time worrying on this.
Many other last minute problems popped up. The one above was definitely more complicated, but the others were challenging nevertheless. Yet I found out that every time a problem came up, I found a quick solution to it if I just focused. My whole experience when making last minute edits taught me that you have to look over a machine a lot. Twice or three times at a minimum. Because otherwise, you won’t be prepared to start the next step. And there’s never a point to do anything in life if you aren’t prepared for it.
This photo shows the step with the wheel that I was having a problem with. This is step one, where nothing has changed.
This is step two, where I have added a ramp
This is step three. It is a video. In this, I drop the ball onto the sea saw too show what will happen. My goal is for the ball to fall on the sea saw and yank the string. To work this, first press the link. Only do it once or the video will download too many times. The video will automatically download onto your computer. Click on it and watch it. Then, go too chrome://downloads to delete the video.