Yesterday, we planned out our projects and made a diagram. Our projects have to be made out of balsa wood, so I chose to make a drawer. In the diagram, we have to include the dimensions, types of wood joints, and how many 36” long x 3” tall wood planks we’re planning on using.
My drawer is going to be 7” long, 10.5” wide, and 5” tall. I’m going to use rabbet joints, and I’m planning on using 7 planks of balsa wood.
Here is my project diagram:
The next project we have been working on, after the About Me, is the Music Video.
There’s one project that I really liked that was made by the user, SMS4CKH, (another student in my class). One thing I liked was the animation. He used the original Sprite, the orange cat, and while the music plays, the cat glides and bounces on edges and duplicates itself about every 3 seconds. Also, when you press the space bar, the cat dances to the music, which I thought was great as well.
One thing I liked about the music was that it was an uploaded loop that I’ve heard before. I think it sounded really good.
Lastly, there were two speakers in the background that were meant to be the Sprites playing the music. I also used this feature in my project.
This week, I filmed my first video! I used one of my brother’s ninja turtle legos that I found in one of his bins. I also got very lucky because my brother just had a birthday party and in the goody bag, he got some chocolate soccer balls. I figured they’d be the perfect size for the lego ninja turtle, so I asked my brother if I could use one of them for my first attempt. I used blue tac that I brought home from camp this summer to keep the soccer ball and the ninja turtle in place while taking pictures. As well as finding the ninja turtle in one of my brother’s bins, I found a mini soccer goal that I used one year for my birthday cake. It was also the perfect size. I came up with the idea of using confetti once the ninja turtle scores, so my mom said that I could hole punch red paper. For the field, I printed out a picture of grass and I also printed the word “GOAL” to add as graphics when the turtle scores.
About the app, I really enjoy using it because it’s not complicated at all. It’s very easy to use. It keeps all of your pictures in order and plays them all together to make a video.
Before making my first video, I watched some tutorials online that gave great tips. Here are some links:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_ppedXZHhE0
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=td2DgP56DP0
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YvJm7p9Q58Y
After making a couple of videos, I learned some things that I could do differently for my final product. One: at the end of my second video, I accidentally moved the iPad, which messed up the angle of the next pictures. Next time, I’ll attach the iPad to the table by using blue tac, so the frame won’t move while taking pictures. Two: at the part when the figure scores, and I make confetti fall down, it was too far away from the camera, so my mom, (who helped me by taking the picture), wasn’t able to capture the confetti in the air. Next time, I’ll make sure to drop the confetti right in front of the camera. Three: I didn’t take multiple pictures of the goal sign, and I didn’t fix the posture of the figure right after kicking the ball. Next time, I’ll take at least three pictures of the goal sign, so it doesn’t disappear so quickly and I’ll also make sure to move the figure’s leg back to its regular position after kicking the ball. Finally, the fourth thing that I need to improve is making sure that in the video it looks like the ball rolls instead of just moving forward. I’ll need to rotate it a little each time and not just move it further down.
Here is my second product (the first one was an even simpler version just to try out the app):
This week in tech, we have been working on our solder designs. We are supposed to make a circle with whatever design we want on the inside. I made a lighting bolt, so it looks like the Flash’s logo. We made a drawing of them on an app called Vectornator, and then we printed it out as a our sort-of blueprint. After that, we got the choice of using brass or silver as a our wire and then we started making the real thing.
At first, it was so frustrating because I didn’t know how to bend the wire in the shape of my design. So I had the idea of cutting the wire into pieces the same size as each line of the lighting bolt. I did this because when I solder it, all the pieces are going to stick together because of the heat and, hopefully, it’ll look like my design.
I think we begin to solder next week, so in the next post I’ll include some pictures on how it came out!
At this point, Nick and I are done with our sketch. When we got together outside of school, we exchanged ideas on what we thought could be fun steps to add, and then we chose the best ones to add to the final sketch. One of the hardest ones is getting the computer to call Nick’s phone to make it vibrate. Nick actually tried a cool new way to do it and it worked, so we’re probably going to do that! I guess that when we start building the machine, it’s likely that we’re going to make more changes like that. I think that maybe new ideas will come to us or that we’ll have to make changes because some of the steps that we put in the sketch may not work.
Here is my sketch…
Nick has been a really good partner. He is excited about the project, like me, and contributes good ideas. We tend to agree on most things and if we don’t, it’s something minor. I really feel good about working with a partner because if one of us is having trouble figuring something out, the other can help. Working with a partner can be hard if you are constantly disagreeing, or if one ends up having to do most of the work and gets frustrated, but that’s not the case here.
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