Month: April 2019

Technology has been by far my favorite quarterly, and there is no doubt about that. The whole ten weeks have been so entertaining and have taught me so much that I can take with me into the real world. Solder people, flashlights, circuits, flying cars, breakout EDU’s, and automaton. I can’t believe it has only been ten weeks. My favorite project personally was the solder people because that’s when I started to take tech so seriously and actually have fun doing it. The most useful thing I learned that I didn’t know how to do before was soldering. It is such a useful technique that you need to proceed with caution but it gives you such a thrill when your name is called off of the list to solder your arms on to the body of the person. Sadly, tomorrow is the end of the quarter and I have to move on to a new quarterly, art. I loved technology and it taught me so much. I’m so sad it’s over but thankful I learned how to use many tools and machinery that I didn’t know before. Thank you so much to Mr. Calvert for being so patient and always helping me with my work first, I wouldn’t be able to make any of the projects without your guidance. I can’t wait to finish making automaton on the last day of technology tomorrow!!

In technology… it was time to build the automatas. A automata was a box that had something going on inside in order for something outside the box to move. When Mr. Calvert told us to sketch out our ideas I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to make something spin. So since my other friends where doing cartoon characters as their item moving (in my case spinning) on top of the box I decided to stick with them and to do a cartoon character as well. I picked Hello Kitty. So now it was actually time to make the automata and thankfully Mr. Calvert had already done the first step for us. He made us the box that our automata would be made out of so all we needed to do for the first step was cut and glue four triangles onto the corners of the box. After that we needed to find the middle point on the sides of the box and poke an awl through it. Then put the stick through and cut out your follower and cam with the scroll saw. Sounds easier then it actually is. So far, this is all we are up to and I can’t wait to finish making my Hello Kitty spinning automata.

After we finished the hardest project, flashlights it was time to move on to something a little more fun. Mr. Calvert had us in groups of four and moved us around tables. Each table had a mystery on top of it. We had tor twist the novel, see what happened and sketch what we thought what was happening inside of the mystery box. Some examples of what was being done on top of the box was spinning a object, making something go up and down, side to side, and moving like a wave (going up and down horizontally). It was a little challenging to try to figure out what was in the box because we had no idea of what could’ve even been inside a mystery box like that. Trying to figure out what was happening was the part that stumped me but it interested me because now I was invested in wondering what could even be happening in that box.

I thought this was going to be easy, wow, was I wrong. We started off by making the circuit. The scientific part, not my strong suit. We first had to get the LED light to actually light up so we had to make a full circuit. I had to strip one wire and bend, strip a second wire and bend with pliers, and strip a third wire and bend. Obviously, not repetitive at all. After, we had to solder (yay) the wire connected to the circuit which was connected to the second wire which was connected to the battery which was connected to the wire which was connected to the LED light. Sounds harder then it actually is, all you have to do is glue in that same order. After you make sure your light is able to be lit then you cut the pipe with a SAW. Yes I repeat, a saw. You quickly and with a lot of pressure cut the pipe like you are cutting steak. Then all you have to do it insert the switch, (Mr. Calvert does this for you) morph it together and stylize.

We started a new project, flashlights. This might’ve been the hardest project we’ve done in Technology so far. We first had to make this long and tiring diagram. When I tell you the diagram needed to be perfect, trust me it needed to be perfect. This whole process was stressing me out and it took me longer to make the diagram then actually building the flashlight. Crazy, right?! Sketching, drawing, planning, measuring, and focusing, this is what you needed to do in order to make the flashlight. We had to measure the amount of half inch boxes that we wanted to be the size of the flashlight. Draw the wires and measure and cut the actual ones that we would be using. Sketch the LED light to shape it as it looks in reality. And curve/round the cap to make it very precise.. which was definitely the hardest part for me. When I was finished the dreadful diagram, I sighed of relief. Now on to the next struggle… putting it together!!