recovery systems

Today anja, clara and i made a very large parachute that could "rescue" 3 sand ballons. We used half of a large garbage bag and string. We dropped the parachute from the 6th grade.

I learned that making a parachute is easy but it's important to keep it balanced. We also cut a hole in the top to allow some air to pass through so it would fall more evenly.

Thrust Structures

Today Unity and I made and tested thrust structures out of Popsicle sticks (Taryn had to leave early). The goal was to make a structure that was at least 5 cm tall, that had space in the center only using certain materials. The structure had to survive 3 successful tests. For the tests we put our structures under the rocket on a device with a lever. We dropped a large bag filled with sand on one end of the lever and the rocket went up in the air. For a test to be successful the rocket had to shoot up at least one meter.

Both of our rockets were successful and both were very similar. Unity's was 80 grams and mine was 82 grams, we also used the same amount of popsicle sticks. And both had lot's of sturdy triangles.

I learned that a thrust structure must be very sturdy and tough but it is very important that it not be too heavy. I also learned what a thrust structure is.

Like robotix I'm slightly curious about how this will relate to M2M but I think there will be some kind of building challenge or something like that.

Robotix

Today Lilly, Madeira and I made a robotix car that had to pick up and carry two "moon rocks". It was quite challenging but then we figured out how every thing worked and it became much easier. We completed our challenge and everything turned out well despite our struggles.

I learned that it can be hard to have multiple separate engines running at once but if you can figure out how to turn them off all at once, it's not as hard as it looks.

I'm curius how exactly this relates to M2M, I'm assuming that we will have to do something with robot.