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Mechanical Light Switch Assignment

This week in technology we made our own Mechanical light switches out of pre-cut wood. The wood was cut into shapes, some of the pieces included were, gears, pins, plates, sliders, and pinions. On schoology, there were a series of videos where instructions were given on how to assemble the switch, chamfer the plate on your wall to connect the switch to it, and wax the gears (we did this by drawing on the edges of the gears with crayons). The rest of the materials needed to assemble the switch were wood glue (to stick the pieces together) , crayons (to wax the gears edges) , a screw driver (to connect it to your wall) , and a mallet (to hammer the pieces into each other.)

 

This is how mine came out.

 

As you can see their are pieces of wood, gears, and joining pieces to make the switch. These were all attached with glue and the mallet, so they can be a little stiff and hard to turn it. So for this reason, I think if I were to make this again I would work on that because the whole point is that it needs to move effortlessly to turn off my light switch just by rotating a handle on the top that is attached to gears. But overall, its pretty good, I think for the most part it accomplishes the goal I was planning to achieve, and it was really fun to make. I’m very happy with this project and I’m proud of it, although there are definitely things I can improve on it, like I said I’m very happy with it!

Crank Assignment

This week in technology we built our own cranks out of paper. The paper was provided by a packet along with instructions on how to make the crank. The rest of the materials needed to assemble the crank were glue, ruler, scissors, tape, and a tiny exacto knife (the scissors,  exacto knife, and ruler were for cutting the shaped out of the packet).

Before I show you how my crank turned out here is a photo of a type of crank for reference

Now here is the one I made out of paper

As you can see inside the cube shape that I built is a gear that is attached to a handle on the side. The handle is supposed to make the gear be able to rotate. As you can also see mine has a lot of tape on it to keep it together, it also has a lot of glue but you can’t see that. The problem with my crank was that it was too fragile. The gear wouldn’t fully rotate without hitting what I called “road bumps”, I meant road bumps as in little stops where I thought the whole thing would just collapse. When turning, I had to be really careful because it was so fragile I was afraid it would break. I think the reason for this is when I was making the gear I probably didn’t put enough tape on it or stick it into the cube as good as I should have so if I were ever to make another crank, I would definitely improve on that. But ultimately, I think it’s pretty good for the first try and it was better then I expected, after all I was surprised it could even move. I’m still proud of it though, and I had fun making it!

Cams assignment

This week in tech we built our first automata’s. We are learning about cams so we all got to build our own cams with materials from a packet. All the paper, cutouts, and instructions were provided by the packet, but to build the  cam includes a ruler (for bending the paper and cutouts), glue (for gluing them together to make a shape), and of course, scissors and a tiny exacto knife for cutting things out. After following no the directions and assembling the cam I ended up with this.

For this assignment I needed the axel (the thing in the middle of the cube) to be able to spin and the shaft (the thing at the top of the cube) to be able to be pushed down into the cube. For the axel; the way that I made it spin is connecting it to the bug circle on the outside and using that to make it spin. But to do that meant that there wasn’t a lot of room for the shaft to go down. So I think next time I will work on figuring that out and creating more space. As for how far it could move, the shaft was attached to a hole at the top of the cube with no glue so it could move. As for the rest of the structure I used rectangular, circular, and all kinds of other shapes and bent them, glued them, or folded them together to get a cube. The initial cube shape though was included with the packet but not a cube just a flat sheet of outlined paper to be folded into one, and this cube also included the holes on the sides and the top for the axel and shaft. Overall I think that the cam is a little messy, but its fine for the first try. If I were to do it again I would improve my folds and my sloppy cuts to make a better shape for the cube and like I said fine more space for the shaft. I liked doing this project and it was fun learning about and making the cam mechanism.

Truss Structure Assignment

This week in computer tech we did a Truss Structure Assignment. For the assignment we had to build a truss structure out of toothpicks and food connectors (carrots, apples, broccoli, etc etc).

This is how mine came out.

As you can see I made my truss structure a cube with eight food connectors and 12 toothpicks. To test the strength of my structure I stacked books on top of it until it collapsed. I got up to three books without it falling over. We had also made another structure in class that held five books, and obviously mine did not exceed this structure but still held quite a few for a small cube made out of toothpicks. I observe that mine only held three books instead of five because it wasn’t as sturdy (although quite sturdy) as the one modeled in class. This was probably because I didn’t push my toothpicks far enough into my food connectors. I also observed that as I piled books on my structure didn’t just stay in one position it slowly learned until the weight of the fourth book while having the three other books took it down, which I found interesting and now I can learn from it and make the next structure I build better. Although my truss structure wasn’t as sturdy as I could have made it, I still find it really cool how it held the weight of all three of those books. Overall I really enjoyed making my structure and I had fun and learned things from testing it. This was a really fun project!

Week 2- Build a better beam

This week in technology for my “Build a better beam” project, I needed to build two beams. One beam I needed to build for the project is called an I-beam

 

This is what an I-beam traditionally looks like

This is the I-beam I made using tape, glue, and cardboard

I also made a beam of my own design which looked like this

For this I also used the materials tape, glue, and cardboard

After building these beams, I had to test them. I tested them by balancing the edges of a beam on two chairs and putting a bag in the middle of the beam

which looks like the photo above. Then I would put various objects  like books, tape rolls, and pencil cases into the bag and see how many items I could fit into the bag until the beam that was being tested could no longer support it. I tested both beams one time and eventually came to the conclusion that although only by a little, the I-beam was in fact stronger then the beam of my design because it held more items. I think this was the outcome because the I-beam was slightly more secure then my beam and was more sturdy and straight. I really enjoyed making these beams and testing them because it was fun to experiment with the beams, I had a lot of fun making and testing them and I learned a lot about the strength and flexibility of I-beams, and even how I could successfully make my own. This was a really fun project!

Adhesives- Glue

Today in technology I explored a Nearpod about the adhesive glue. In the Nearpod I learned many things about different kinds of glue, the history of glue, and watched a demo of somebody showing different ways we can use PVA glue to make joints. One thing I learned from this Nearpod was that glue wasn’t always used for gluing things together, like paper and cardboard. In 70,000 BC they used glue to make their cave drawings last longer. But over the years glue became to be used like we use it today. I also learned glue wasn’t always made out of rubber or Polyvinyl alcohol, years ago they were made of dead horses and milk. I also learned about the setting and curing. Setting is the amount of time it takes for glue to become solid, and curing is the amount of time glue takes to be it’s maximum strength. Most of the time, the setting and curing of glue is different for each brand and sometimes different because of the weather outside. I also learned a lot from the demo I watched. I could see only from the video that there are so many ways to join material in any position with glue. I found this interesting because I didn’t know glue could do so many things. I also didn’t know many things that I learned in this nearpod, like the setting and curing of glue, how glue was used for cave paintings in early years, and glue wasn’t always made out of the material they make it today. I really enjoyed learning from this nearpod, and now I know so many different things that are super interesting and I didn’t know before.

Final Tynker Project

In my last week of computer technology, I completed a final Tynker project. In this project I learned how to interact with the audience of the code, ask them questions, and receive answers. The point of this project was to ask an audience a few questions about a subject I am learning in school, I asked them about math. So I put in a few questions for them to answer at them bottom of the screen, for example “2+2=4”. At the end of the code when all the questions were answered the person answering them would get a score, for example “3/4 points”. I also included a few sound affects that would play depending on wether someone got the answer wrong or right, for some personality. I really loved this project because I got to be so creative with it, and I got to experiment with code. It’s too bad this is the last project, because I really like coding on Tynker. After I finished this project I published it to my class Tynker showcase like my other classmates did. One project form the showcase I really liked was Brady’s, because it looked really good, the coding and question+ answering was really fun, and I really liked how he set it up. This project was so fun and awesome to do and I got to be really creative with it, which I liked. Overall, this project was really fun and engaging! I had a really good time!

Spreadsheets

This week in computer tech we have been working on google sheets. We hav learned how to make formulas and create charts.

The chart (made in google sheets) above graphs my physical activity over the course of the last week. I created this graph in google sheets after writing all the information down in google sheets and translating it into a graph. What I did was I put the days of the week on the top of a column and I put the physical activities I was planning to do everyday on the side of each column. Then I filled it out accordingly. After I had done this I wanted to figure out the totals of all the activity I had done each day. Instead of tracking up time to count all of the numbers and add them together, I used a google sheets formula. What I did was I made a column underneath all the other ones and labeled it “totals”. In the space underneath each column on that column I would write and “=“ and then I would put after that “insert column number on the side and column letter on the top + another role of those formulas” and so on until it was the end of the column, except the numbers would go up as I want up the sheet. Then I filled all the rows out just like that and hit return and it would calculate the total for me! I found this so cool and interesting, I didn’t know google sheets could do that. Now its a tool I will use way more often. I also think this technique would be good for a lot of other things like calculating a number of pages you read or calculating the number of school assignments you have done fo rather week. I’m really glad I learned this technique because know I can use it for whatever!

Today on swift playgrounds I started writing swift code directly with the assignment- answers. In this assignment I was supposed to code a conversation with questions and answers between two people. Although confusing at times this activity was fun and it helped me understand directly writing once better. Once I got the hang of writing the codes down and coming up with the questions  and answers it became really fun. As you can see above I have annotated the screenshot of they completed code, the yellow marks are supposed to divide the codes and the red underline to show the code of the text and where it showed up so you can really understand what is going on with the picture. Overall I liked this activity and it taught me a lot about directly writing code and a fun way to do it!

Learn to code 1- Checking for switches

Completion of code

 

Today I tried the coding of the activity “Checking for switches”. As you can see above the goal of the activity was to get past three switches to get to the need of the island and turn the switches on in the process. The activity mainly focused on those switches so it was easier to focus on that one thing. The most difficult thing about this activity for me was all the coding and functions I had to make for the byte to complete the challenge, you had to pay really closer attention to tiny details and that was hard for me. Overall I think this was a fun and engaging way to learn how to use these switches. Although at some times it was hard I really enjoyed it.

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