Finishing Flashlights

We now have to cut outer pipes, drill them, and solder our wires. We cut our pipes with a saw we drill them with a drill press and we solder our wires with a soldering iron. But before all that we have to measure our wires and pipes, we do this with a ruler and a long measuring wire.  For sawing we don’t have to push down that much because the blades will do most of the hard work. For the drilling we have to draw an “X” where we want to drill then we have to adjust the holder until the X is under the drill then we turn it on and just push down. For the soldering we have to clip the wires on the third hands then solder the wires together but with little solder because it can burn the wire. After we’re done with this then we can draw on it.

Clockwork movie

Today we watched a movie about early machines, called clockwork. Machines all started with a mechanism called, Antikythera mechanism this was made in Greece at least 2000 years ago. We learned that a person named, Christiaan Huygens took an idea from Galileo Galilei and developed the first modern pendulum mechanism.

Plastic Problem

We took a break from our flashlights to see the movie, Plastic Problem. We learned that there is a huge amount of plastic everywhere, for example: the ocean (Great Pacific Garbage Patch), there’s micro-plastic everywhere, there’s liter. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the size of two Texas’s! It’s so bad that in 2050 there’s supposed to be more plastic in the ocean than fish!

Flashlights

This week we started drafting our flashlights, mine looks like this…

  The flashlight has to fit in a box so we have a limited amount of space. We have to cut and drill our pipes so new were taught how to use the saw and drill press. We also have to solder our wires which we’ve already learned. The draft has to be scaled and have measured wires and pipes. We need to include the battery, the switch, and the light. The dotted lines represent the parts that we can’t see but are still attached to the flashlight.

Thailand Story

This week of tech we watched a video on a soccer team that got stuck in a cave in Thailand. The kids were found and retrieved but it took more than a month. The procedure was very hard to preform with very narrow passages all filled with water and one death. People from all around the world came to help rescue the kids and their coach. Now I have heard of twelve boys who will NEVER go into a cave again.

Human Rights Day

On Human Rights Day we came to tech and there was a person there. No one knew what she was doing there but we didn’t mind. The person gave us a presentation on her company and also a story about PJS. The persons company was called, Pajama Program. The story she told us was about a girl who didn’t know what PJS were.

Soldering

We started doing soldering this week. I learned that when your soldering you burn the solder it doesn’t just come out of the machine. There are a few steps to soldering… 1. You have to draw some possible designs. 2. You have to choose which design you want to solder. 3. You have to shape the metal to fit your design. 4. You have to put the metal on double sided tape. 5. You now can solder all of the joints together and your done! I soldered a basketball and gave it to my mom (also my basketball coach.)

Atoms

The second week of tech we learned about atoms. We talked about electrons, neutrons, and protons. I never knew that atoms aren’t the smallest things on the planet!  We talked about what atoms are made of and what they look like. Atoms are made of electrons, neutrons, and protons this is what one looks like.

Safety Rules in Tech and Breakout EDU

On the second day of tech we learned about the safety rules of tech. Mr. Calvert told us about all the tools that we can use and some of them are super dangerous so we have to wear proper protection. I think if I am carful then I won’t get hurt.

 

On the third day of tech we played a game called Breakout EDU. We had to find clues to unlock all of the locks but all of  locks were jammed!

 

Capstone Reflection

For my capstone I did Wormholes. In my capstone presentation was so fun and once I finished the first presentation it felt so relieving. I thought that it wasn’t that hard to do, so… the next few presentations were easy. When I presented to a live audience I learned that if you present to littler kids it’s much harder to keep their attention. And sometimes the older kids got distracted because science isn’t something many kids would choose to listen to. One challenge I had to overcome was entertaining kids enough that they stayed for the whole presentation. It was really hard because the little kids would always want to go to a presentation with a lot or cool artifacts.

This is my presentation