Thursday, January 23, 2014

Fastener Lab




Fastener Lab



The point of this lab was to create a sculpture using limited amoutn of materials. Each group was given 3-7 peices of 3/4"x3"x6" wood and a certain fastener. We were trying to create a sculpture that was either abstract or resembled something in the real world. My group had thread as a fastener and we tried to create a fountain. Trying to capture moving water was hard, but a good concept.

Build a Compound Machine

Build a Compound Machine 
 

For this project we created a compound machine by combining our our previous simple machines. We combined out wheel and axel, lever, and pulley to create a much higher machanical advantage. By combining our machines we were able to move heavier things with less force.
 
We were very succesful, we had one of the highest machanical advantages in the class. Other groups had trouble because they didn't change their lever to create a higher machanical advantage. Other groups had trouble with their wheel and axel, most groups did create a higher machanical advantage but creating a longer arm. But the weight of their arm countered the distance away from the axel. We put another arm opposite the origibal arm to create a counter weight. Everyone went up in machanical advantage but not everyone used the machines to their potential. Our group could have been better if our lever was constructed more stable to be able to hold more weight.

This project was quite difficult, attaching each individual simple machine to utilize each machines machanical advantage was not easy. We had to out the lever suspended to utilize the wheel and axel and the lever. The pulley was very hard to use. Our group only used one wheel on the pulley. If we were able to more than one our machanical advantage would have increased. If we built our machine on a larger scale, we could have moved much more weight. I would want to build a huge compound machine using all simple machines to life a human being with the force of a slight breeze. Like blowing into a windmill and picking up poggi on the end of a lever.