It’s the last week of quarter 2, which means we are halfway through the school year! It also means, this is our last week of tech 6. It’s been a really fun class, and I’m excited to have tech agai in 7th grade! 🙂

Our last project for tech was building a small circuit to power an LED light. It was fairly easy, we just had to connect the wires, resistor, 9 volt battery, and LED light on a breadboard.

After that, we learned about batteries, how they are powered, and how they help the environment. We learned about how we are trying to develop new, safer batteries. This is much better than burning fossil fuels into the atmosphere, and these batteries are what power electric cars, phones, and many other things.

We’re in the seventh week of tech! We spent the last few days working on building our cranks, which are similar to the cams, but easier. I think I’ve gotten much better at building these, because it went by much quicker and easier. It works smoother too! The crank works goes in a circular motion back and forth, while the cams went up and down. Overall, it was a fun project and I improved on using the slice cutter and building!

A few days ago I finished my cam, and actually made a second one too. My original plan was to make three cams, one as a Christmas present for my mom, one as a Christmas present for my dad, and one for the assignment. I wanted the ones for my parents to have three followers, so that I could glue on letters to them and make them say “mom” and “dad”, and the letters would bounce up and down. That didn’t work out, the follower kept bumping into each other and the cam wouldn’t work. So, I improvised and made them with two followers, and the letters said “Ma” and “Pa”. I also ended up showing those for the assignment. Here’s a picture of my cams!

Last time we were in tech, we practiced using the ceramic cutters to make clean cuts. Next week in tech, we are going to be making cams, and our cams are going to perform a simple task. So far, we don’t know much about this project, except that we are going to be cutting out shapes from automata templates made of cardstock to build these. From what we’ve seen so far, these look really cool and satisfying. Looking forward to next week’s project!

Our latest project in tech 6 was building catapults. There were videos with different options of different kinds of catapults we could build. After building the catapult, we measured the effort arm, the load arm, and the mechanical advantage. We also got to create a game with our catapults, then we each made a short video explaining the measurements and the game. Overall it was another fun project, and helped me understand better about the different kinds of levers we learned about.

This week in tech 6, we did two projects. One was the I beam project we started last week, and one was the truss project we started yesterday. The I beam project was really fun, we got to use cardboard to design an I beam, and test it against a standard I beam. For the truss project we used baby carrots and toothpicks to design a structure and see how many books the structure could hold before failing. Both projects were really fun!

Last time in tech we watched a video that explained the history of automatons. A long time ago machines that moved like people was only a dream, it seemed unachievable. After the first successful automaton was built by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1737, lots of new and more interesting automatons were built. Some automatons could write, some could draw, some could play music, and some were even coated in real human skin. There were very interesting theories about the differences between man and machine. I thought it was amazing how we could construct something that worked so well, and I was curious about the science behind it and how the machines really work.

Yesterday in tech we learned about different materials, and how some stretch and some fracture. We studied examples like the Titanic, and one example that I found especially interesting was the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse. What happened was that due to 42 mph winds, the bridge started curving and moving, almost like a rollercoaster. This happened because the bridge was made of steel, which can stretch. Steel first stretches, then forms a neck, where all the pressure is applied, and eventually that’s where the steel breaks. That’s what happened with the Tacoma Narrows bridge.

Click here to watch a real video of what happened to the bridge! It shows the hard steel bending and curving, and it looks amazing!

This week we did our final project for Computer Tech, where we got to choose from Tinker, Playgrounds, and google sheets to do our project. I chose Playgrounds, and coded an interesting conversation, covering a lot of the things we learned in Playgrounds. Below is a picture of what I did in playgrounds:

Overall, I think that google sheets is defiantly the most useful, but playgrounds was a fun coding app to use.