Hello everybody! So my science teacher, Mr. Turner, started a new unit, and it’s going to be on passion projects!

Incase you don’t know what that is, it is a topic you choose (something your interested in) and do a mini project on it.

My topic that I want to do is either photography, or art. I think I will do art though, because I am more interested in art then photography.

Anyways, I hope that you guys enjoyed this blog post!

If you had read my last blog post then you’d know that I am now on my third swich.

To start this swich what I did was I got a rectangular piece of cardboard, and cut it into two pieces. One piece both the pieces were rectangles, but one of the rectangles was slightly smaller then the other.

To build this I cut the smaller rectangle with lines, but the lines didn’t go all the way through… So now you may be wondering then what was the point of cutting lines into the cardboard? Well since I cut lines in it, it was able to bend very easily. And the next thing i did was taped a strip of tinfoil to the edge of the bendy cardboard, and I taped a piece of tinfoil to the bigger piece of cardboard. Then I glued it, but I had to glue it in a certain way to make sure that the bendy cardboard was able to touch the piece of tinfoil on the other cardboard.

Once I was done with that I tested my swich, and guess what… It worked!

Here is what the final thing looked like:

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If you read my last blog post, then you would know that I made a switch. I have made another switch which is even cooler then the one before!

I started a new switch and the way that it works is there will be a rectangular piece of cardboard, and one popsicle stick on each side of the cardboard, and there will be a popsicle stick that is glued to the top of the popsicle sticks, and then there is a rubber band that has a piece of cardboard with tinfoil on the bottom of it, and there is a piece of tinfoil in the middle of the bottom piece of cardboard and you push the rubber band with the cardboard attached and push down to the rectangle to light up the light.

And to build this, what I did was I used the jigsaw to cut a big rectangular piece of cardboard, and a small circle, then I cut  the tops of the popsicle sticks to make them shorter, and easier to use. Once I was done with all the cutting I started hot glueing. My first thing to hot glue was the popsicle sticks, so I hot glued each of the popsicle sticks to the opposite sides of the cardboard, and I hot glued the other popsicle to the top of the two other popsicle sticks.       Then I hot glued the rubber band to the top popsicle stick. And then it was time to start taping. The first thing I did with the tape was tape some tinfoil to the small circle, and I also taped more tinfoil to the piece of rectangular cardboard. The last, and final thing I did was tape the small circle, to the bottom of the rubber band.

So to be sure it worked I attached the wires to my swich and pushed the circular piece of cardboard down onto the tinfoil, and guess what happened… IT WORKED!

Thanks for checking out my blog tune in for my next portfolio post!

Here’s a picture of my swich!

So as you might know from my last blog post I finished my soldering piece, and now I will  be working on switches.

The way that our switches are supposed to work is by putting tinfoil against tinfoil and connecting it to wires and the goal is to light up a light. We are supposed to make three switches, but it’s ok if we don’t make them by the end of the unit, but we can only make three switches max.

My first switch was something pretty simple. What I needed to make this switch was cardboard, a rubber band, a popsicle stick, and most importantly… tinfoil! I started by using something called a jigsaw. Now you may be wondering what this is… This is a machine that allows you to cut straight lines, make a perfect circle, and make the perfect cut for anything your trying to cut from cardboard.

So I started by using the jigsaw to cut a rectangular piece of cardboard, a very small square piece of cardboard, and an average size square. Then I hot glued the very small cardboard square onto the middle of the bigger rectangular piece of cardboard, and I also hot glued the other square onto the edge of the cardboard rectangle. After that I  hot glued the rubber band under the cardboard rectangle, and hot glued the other half of the rubber band to the  popsicle stick. Then the rest was simple, I Taped tin foil on the bottom edge of the popsicle stick, and taped tinfoil to the square that was on the edge of the rectangle.

Once I was done with that it was Time to test my switch! To test it I attached one red wire to the square with tinfoil, then I attached a  black wire to the side of my popsicle with the tinfoil. And then  I put the popsicle on top of the very small square that was in the middle of the rectangle and pressed the popsicle against the tinfoil square to light up the light! And it worked!

Here’s the picture of the jigsaw…

    On my last blog I talked about some of the safety rules, and some other things, and now I’ll be talking about soldering.

    Soldering is like melting meddle. It is SUPER hot, and if you touch it, it will burn! Which is why you must be super careful with it, going back to the topic of safety that I discussed last time.

    What we have been doing is designing a sketch and we will be using wire and creating a small design with it. But that’s not all! There are some rules to think about that will make the design process a little harder then it already seems… Number one is, we are only allowed to use five (max) pieces of wire. And we have to make this inside of a small circle! For me this is going to be a challenge because I have a lot of designs that would be so cool but there would have to be more then five wires. Also I had some ideas that would’ve been sick! But they have to stay inside the circle which is making it a lot harder then it needs to be. 

    Everyone made sketches and everyone has picked one of their sketches/designs to make for this soldering project. But on the other hand, there’s me who has no idea of what to do! The thing is I have made lots of designs but I have some good ones that I’m deciding on.

    Oh, and trust me there’s more to it then just that! We will also be making them into things! For example, a necklace, bracelet, key chain, earrings, and many more! I think I have decided that I am going to make mine into a bracelet. Also we will not just be making them for our selves! We will be making them for the world! What I mean by this is, we will be selling all of the things students soldered, and we will be raising the money for charity. We will be voting on charities but we haven’t really been discussing that to much.

    I hope you enjoyed my blog post, and come check out some that I’ll be uploading soon!

For my quarterly I got technology. So far It has been pretty good, and also fun!

What we have learned so far is how to stay safe when your using any of the materials used to build/create things. For example, there are 12, “SMS Technology Safety Rules”. A few rules out of the 12 are things like, “Don’t assume you know training before tools” or, “Before using a machine get instruction, get permission, inspect machine”. Because you always, and I mean always want to be safe before using a machine!

Another thing I learned is to work together to solve something. For example we played a game called breakout. Breakout was a team game, and to win you had to find clues to unlock a box and whichever team unlocks the box first wins! But unfortunately no team won, because we couldn’t unlock the box on time.

I’ll give you an update soon as possible, until next time! BYE!