Overall, I loved tech. I loved all the projects and Mr. Calvert was really nice. It was fun but some of the projects like the crank were hard and I didn’t like them as much. If I were to do tech again and I got to chose the projects, I would chose the last project which included the breadboard and I liked the project where you would rub the balloon against your hair and the tinfoil in the cup would move. Tech was really good and I enjoyed it while it lasted.
This is our second to last week. This week we did a circuit project and the objective was to light up the LED light. It was actually easier than I expected. I did it the day he showed us. Mine actually looked normal. If you didn’t use a resistor the LED would burn out, but we did use a resistor so it wouldn’t blow out. It’s really sad because tech is coming to an end. This project may have been the shortest one but I think it was the coolest. I think you could do something with it and you could make like something cool with the LED lights.
This week we starting doing our cams. It took me a really long time to build it because I was watching the videos step by step. Im pretty sure it took me about 2 hours. It was really tough and I kept messing up. In the end you were supposed to glue it together so there werent two empty sides and I accidentally glued the wrong side. Oops! I just made way too many mistakes and at first I thought it didn’t work when I made it and I’d have to redo it but turns out it does work! And I’m really glad about that because I would’ve been really mad if I had to redo it.
This week, we learned about the 5 simple machines. For our project, we made a catapult. Basically, we made a goal and took a video of us launching it and then answered some questions. For example, it asked “What’s your effort arm?” and “What’s your load arm?”. My load was 5 and my effort was 6, which made my mechanical advantage 1.2!
ROBLOX, roblox is a game that includes a lot of technology and coding. ROBLOX is a game for all children and there are games inside of roblox. There’s like “Welcome to Bloxburg”, “Adopt Me”, and “Royale High”. These games all involve coding like in Royale High, when you make diamonds, you need to code that it can show the diamonds on the side or something. Or when you buy an egg and hatch it, Or when you place a wall in Bloxburg.
This weeks project is making a truss bridge or something that can hold up weight. It’s all about the triangles. Tomorrow we will start the actual project and build it. The materials we are using are carrots/gummy bears/fruit snacks and toothpicks. We use the toothpicks to stab the food and make a sculpture and take a video and post it to Flipgrid. I can’t wait to try it and I think that ill be able to hold at least 4 books on my truss. Tech has been really fun so far and I think its better than Computer Tech already. He already told us that we are starting a new project on a camera/crank thing. We have to use the safety cutter and this year we are just practicing using it.
This weeks project is comparing two beams. One is an
I-beam and the other is our own custom design. What you do is you follow the video that he gave us and make the I-beam and then make your own beam, which I just made a square beam. Then you tested it by putting two chairs together and putting the beam on the chairs and it should have the ends on the chairs and the middle touching nothing. You then get cans of soup and put them in a bag and put the bag on the beam. You keep adding cans till the beams can’t hold anymore. For me, my own custom beam worked a lot better then the first one. The I-beam bent in the middle and it started cracking with 5 cans, so I removed one and I bet 4 would’ve done well but I didn’t test it because it already cracked. My beam held 6 cans, it might’ve been able to add another too.
Some things I can’t wait to do for tech are all the projects. I like doing lots of projects and arts and crafts so I think those will be fun. I also wish that we could still make a speaker but this year we can’t sadly. But we are going to be doing some other fun projects like next week we are going to do something with carrots and gummy bears, so I think that will be pretty fun! I also like that we can actually go to the tech classroom because thats so much better so he can write on the board and have the desks that we need.
Computer science isn’t just coding, it is something you use, wear or see in your everyday life. For example, take; fashion. Not only is it designing a perfect dress or finding out how long the dress is going to be, it needs computer science too. You can find computer science almost anywhere. In the video, it said computer science was used for art! You thought you’d never find computer science in art, right? But you need it to program your art. Even movies use computer science. In the movie, “Finding Nemo”, there was a specific scene where computer science was used. Do you know how all your teachers say that you need to learn math because you’ll need it for almost everything when you’re older and get a job? Well, that goes for computer science too. Knowing computer science is going to help change the world into a better place.
Our first track design was the track used 11 magnets, 3 strip. 8 rings. For our vehicle we used 7 Magnets altogether. 2 strip magnets and 5 ring magnets. 2 on the edges and the 5 ring magnets in between.
This is our first group design.
One of our problems was our vehicle keep on tilting to both sides, back and forth. So we had to align our magnets to one centimeter away from the edge of the paper. So we did that a centimeter away form the edge of the paper for the track and vehicle so it would be equal and not tilt. Another problem was that the disk magnets did not work at all. We tried and it didn’t levitate as high as the final and second one.
Our final design was simple it had 2 magnets on each edge. On the vehicle it had 1 magnet on both edges like the track. But only with 2 strip magnets altogether on the vehicle. Altogether strip magnets on the track was 4. So in all we had 6 strip magnets for our final design.
This is our train, the 2 strip magnets on each edge.
This is our final track design. We had to fix this the most.
Our thoughts and feelings were basic. We were sad/mad when I tried putting ring magnets on top of the vehicle, I thought it would levitate higher. We were happy when it all aligned right. It was surprising for me because I thought the second time we did the maglev train (Maglev Post #2) was kind of better than this time to be honest.
This is a birds eye view, google drawing for our maglev train.