For my cams project, I decided to build two of them, cam A and B. I cut out everything first, and it took a long time, around 30 minutes. Then, I watched the tutorial and followed the instructions. Using the blade thing (I forgot what it is called), I practiced a lot on plain paper, and then finally on the card stock. It came out good in my opinion. Another hard part about the cam was the glueing. The shaded areas were hard to see, and I couldn’t see anything, so I had to infer where we had to glue and also use the tutorial. After I was done my first came, it looked great, and I was satisfied. For the second cam, there was no tutorial, so I used the instructions from the paper. This took around 2 hours, unlike the first cam, because I was familiar with where to glue and using the blade thing, so  I did that a little bit faster. At the end, I had a cam with 1 thing going up and down, and another with two things going up and down. The cams were a fun, but hard experiment, and I had lots of fun doing so.

This blog today is going to be from in class, about mechanical movement cranks and cams. Wheels and axles are attached, the wheel is a larger cylinder than the axle. Works like a lever. Center point to the edge of the axle is radius, and the center point to the edge of the axle to the wheel, and you can calculate the mechanical advantage. Now I am going to be talking about the cams. Followers can come in multiple shapes, but we are using flat followers. In the bearing, the rod goes up and down. While building cams, you have to figure out if our followers move enough. To find this out you can measure the axle with the closest point and the furthest point. Subtract, and that is how far it would travel. Cams can come in any type of shape. 

For the homework assignment catapults, I built two catapults, the two shown in the first video. Since I had exactly 23 popsicle sticks, exactly enough to build both, I decided to do so. In my opinion, the first one showed in the video is much easier than the second one, because of all the rubber bands and sticks. What I figured was that both catapults were class 3 levers. This is because for both of the levers the fulcrum was on one side, the load on the other side, and the effort in between. I made a small game where I had cups as targets, and some small candy for the load. This was a fun game, but this also helped me figure out what catapult was stronger. The easier catapult launched the load around a foot, and the harder catapult launched the load around 4 feet with a lot more power. Overall, this was a fun project, and I think I did well with the catapults and the test.

For this homework, I watched and completed the Nearpod. I learned about the three types of levers which are class one, class two and class three. We can identify this by an acronym made by Mr. Calvert which is FLE 123. F and 1 line up L and 2 line up and E  and 3 line up. The reason why F is the class on lever is because F stands for fulcrum, and if the fulcrum is in the middle it means its a class one lever, and same applies for the other levers. I matched up objects and the types of levers by using the acronym and got it in 2 tries. I think I now know a lot more about levers, and this Nearpod/homework helped a lot.

For this project, I went through the Nearpod from Mr. Calvert. I followed the instructions, and did everything the Nearpod said. The middle part is called the ravine, and on the left and right there is a positive and negative side. After learning about breadboards, I went on to start my project. Putting the wires in the breadboard was hard, but they eventually stayed. While I was putting the cap on to the battery, I saw a flicker of orange light, which could be a fire or something because the wires touched. Then I put the gray and red wires and took out the led light. After combining everything together, the red led lit up. All in all this project was fun, and I think I did well because the LED lit up.

For my building a better beam project, I built both the beam designed by Mr. Calvert and my own. The change I made on my beam which was different from Mr. Calvert was having multiple supports in the middle instead of a singular one. I had around 12 pounds of canned food, and put all the canned food inside a bag, and both beams held it. The beam that was shown in Mr. Calvert’s video bent a little bit, but the one I designed didn’t. I think I did well overall on this project.

For my truss experiment, I used paper. I taped two pencils together, and then rolled the paper, and taped the sides of the paper together to make the paper strong. I then made 12 total of these. I then taped them together to form a cube. The thing I didn’t realize at all was that I didn’t have any triangular supports or trusses. I then filmed my video without trusses, and surprisingly the flimsy square held four books. I think I did well in this project except the trusses which I forgot.

For my electroscope I used a glass cup, smooth without bumps. For the cardboard, I used a cereal box and cut out a circle. I then used a paper clip to put through the middle of the circle. Before I did this, I put some foil at the bottom of the paper clip. Then, I taped the paper clip on and blew up a balloon.  I used felt and my hair. Off camera, I struggled when I used felt, but I did well when I used my head. I also realized that the project might’ve not worked if the there are too big holes in the circle. When I recorded the final video, it worked when I used the felt, but not with my hair. I found out that the positioning of the balloon changes how much the foil moves.

10/19/30 

This blog post is about mechanical machines. A couple examples of inventions of mechanical machines are ovens, phones, computers, cars, etc. The six types of simple machines are the wheel and axle, lever, inclined plane, pulley, screw, and wedge.  A simple machine changes the direction or strength of a force. Work is basically [Force Applied] x [Distance the Object Moved]. Work is measured in joules. Lifting up a bowling ball is 8 N. Rolling a bowling ball up a ramp to the same height is 4 N. Even though this is true, it takes 16 joules to lift it up both 2 meters and rolling it up a ramp. Force is any push or pull and it is measured in newtons. Isaac Newton was born during the year 1642. He was the first scientist that developed the scientific method. He also figured out gravity by applying his thinking of gravity to the solar system. Lastly he discovered the three Laws of Motion and calculus. He found gravity, the three Laws of motion and calculus at his mom’s farm when he escaped the bubonic plague. The first of the three laws of motion are that every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it. The second law of motion states force equals mass times acceleration (F = m*a). The last law of motion is for ever action there is an equal and opposite reaction. On Earth, due to gravity, 102 grams exerts the force of 1 newton. 41 pennies exerts the force of 1 newton. 1 N = 102 grams*9.81m/s^2.