Last week I made a mechanical switch in technology, and I will be writing about the process behind the project. After I finished the project on Thursday of last week, I immediately knew it would be a great blog post to write about.

The process included three steps. First, you had to gather all the pieces you need based on the switch you making. Second, you had to wax the teeth of the pieces, and assemble all the pieces together to make a functional mechanical switch. And lastly, you could attach the final product to your light switch, and then submit a video of it working. Or you could decide to just submit a video of it working without it being on the light switch.

The first pieces I assembled (by gluing) after waxing were the pin and the 2 driver gears. Right after that I put the bar onto the other side of the driver gears. Next, I attached another pin to 2 pinion gears. Then I put the dimmer racks on to the slider. Now I started to assemble things together by attaching them to the sides. First, I put the driver gear (along with the other pieces assembled with it) into the top whole of the slide. Then I put the pinion gears (that were on the pin) into the bottom whole. I did this process to both side pieces (right and left). Lastly, I lined up the slider (with the dimmer racks attached) with the edge of a toggle plate, and then stuck the sides (with everything else attached) into the wholes of the toggle plate. And now I hade a finished, functional mechanical switch!

For this weeks blog post I will be writing about washing machines. I got inspiration for this after I was using the washing machine to clean my family’s clothes. Then the idea popped in my head! I thought “Hey! That would be a great idea for a blog post!” So, I went to my desk and started working.

The technology behind a washing machine has multiple aspects to it. During the wash cycle, a large piece of plastic spins around the clothes exposing every angle of the clothes to the water. The large piece of plastic is powered with by an electric motor as well as the water system. The water system works by having water stored form pipes, and being pushed out after the electric motor turns the inner drum that causes the water to come out of the outer drum. A fun fact about the technology is that the machine is made up of two simple machines. They are a lever, and a wheel and axle.

It was fun to understand the technology behind a washing machine, and I am excited to learn more about other technology soon.

For this weeks blog post I will be writing about what I did in tech class this week. This week, I built a paper crank. I’m going to walk you through the process! First, I cut out all the materials on the paper that we were provided with and used my slice cutter to cut out smaller pieces. Next, I assembled the box where the crank would sit in by folding with rulers and gluing different parts together. Right after that I created the smaller pieces for the crank by folding and gluing them. Then I glued all the smaller pieces, besides two pieces that got glued together, and put them through the whole of a bigger part of the crank. Next, I glued the two pieces that were already glued together to the pieces that went through the whole of a bigger piece. Now it was time to put it in the box! I put the big piece through a square at the top of the box and the two sides that stuck out from it in two opposite circles. For the second to last step, I put two circular pieces around the ends of the axles to help prevent them from moving around incorrectly. Lastly, I glued a wheel on the axle’s right side that would allow you to spin the crank. Overall, I had a really fun time doing this project. It was much quicker to do than the last project we did (cams) because I already had similar experiences. I hope to do more fun projects like this soon.

For this weeks tech blog post I decided to write about the technology behind light bulbs. My inspiration for this was looking for things around my house that would be interesting to write about, soon enough I saw a light bulb and I thought this weeks blog post would be a perfect opportunity to learn more about them. The light bulb is actually very simple, surprisingly, you simply run an electric current through a thin filament, which causes it to get hot. Hot objects emit light , so the bulb glows. Simple, right! A fun fact about light bulbs is that they use a screw to be able to screw into an area. Another cool fact is that the lightbulb was created in 1802 by Humphry Davy and was originally called the Electric Arc Lamp. Moving on, you may notice that every light bulb has something that controls it, that is normally a light switch. A light switch is actually a first class lever that either turns the light on or off. The light switch works by having you push on the switch to the on position to light the bulb, the gate snaps close, completes the circuit, and allows power to flow through the switch and onward to the light fixture. When you flip the switch to the off position, the gateway opens up, interrupting the flow of power to the light fixture. That’s it for this weeks blog post, I am excited to keep expanding my knowledge about technology soon.