Today we are learning about 3D printing, which has been really interesting so far!
Some 3D printing things in my house would be mostly things made of plastic, for example, maybe a 3D printed phone case, or a pencil holder/container. 3D printing is very helpful for sustainability. This is because when you are 3D printing, you aren’t creating any waste. What I mean by this is that 3D printing goes layer by layer, so it is only creating what needs to be, and there is no excess plastic. 3D printing is also a much cheaper alternative. For example, big 3D printer warehouses in China were able to create 3 houses, and each house took under $5000 to make! 3D printing helps a lot. For example, there are lots of prosthetics that are made by printing for people. Also, doctors are trying out 3D printing for making organs that can be used for organ transplants.
Overall, 3D printing is a very important tool in our society, and it is extremely useful!
Today our assignment was to watch four videos about timber harvesting, two from the early 1900’s, and two from modern life. Today I’m going to talk about these videos!
First two videos were very interesting and different from our modern way of harvesting. One thing I noticed was that in modern time, almost everything used to help harvest and create the wood planks were made by machines. However, this is not the case for the early 1900”s. Most of the harvesting was done by hand. They used hand-held tools like axes and saws. Once they were cut, there were a few machines to help turn them into wood planks, but there were still a lot of people helping as well. I also noticed that harvesting timber was much harder back then. Since they didn’t have proper machines to help them cut down the trees, they had to do lots more work in cutting it down by hand. This must’ve taken a while, and these people cutting down the trees would’ve probably been exhausted.
One thing I found interesting was that in the early 1900’s, they used something called a mill pond, where they drop the wood for the mill in a big pond. I never would have thought about doing this, but I can see why they do it, as it makes it much easier to move around the wood!
Overall, it was extremely fun to watch these videos, and I learned a lot.
When I think of the word “building”, I think of making or putting parts together to create something. Building something doesn’t necessarily mean a physical creation. It could be something like building a presentation, and each “part” could be one slide/image. One thing I really enjoyed building was something I made in last year’s technology class. For this project, we had to make a flashlight. It had to have certain dimensions, but the actual design was completely up to us, and we could decorate it however we wanted. I had to do a lot of planning and measuring before I could even get my parts. It helped me learn a lot about building and designing, and I also had a ton of fun!
Here is my flashlight:
I really like building things. I like how hands on it is, and I think when building you have a lot of choice in what you do. Building something includes a lot of different skills, not just putting things together!
