Today, March 24th, we had a meeting with everyone. Ashwin and Cassie chose to start off by building a prototype for our conveyor belt with cups ideas.

Conveyor belt with cups idea:
-cloth for the belt
-two paper towel rolls for the shafts to turn the belt.
-three different sized yoghurt cups and cardboard strips to attach to the cloth (by making slits into the cloth).

Ashwin continued this idea by wrapping twine around the tubes to make it turn the cloth. That didn't work!

Anisha also tried to continue this idea by cutting many cardboard tubes in half to make them a sort of half pipe. She was planning on attaching many to the cloth as well as around the tubes so that it would be like treads. Anisha didn't continue with this idea because none of us knew how to continue..

Also, Matthew and Cassie continued with our prototype from last weekend. Looks at the pictures and you'll probably understand it. We had four strings, two to move the scooper and then two more to move the whole scooper back and forth to get the sand into the hole at the end of the collecting area.

At the same time Anisha and Ashwin worked on another idea that would go with the collecting device that was just discussed before. Anisha came up with an idea to make a kind of rake inside of scooper. The rake is made up of two dowels pushing or pulling a slanted piece of poster board. We all agree that we like the dowels better because they are stronger and more stable and someone can push OR pull the sand collector.

We couldn't think of anything else to do with these prototypes so we moved on to doing something with Ashwin's brother's bike. We jumped right into taking apart the bike to figure out it works! As we were taking apart the different parts, we learned a whole lot about bike mechanics and how we would want to put it back together! We have lots of ideas for next meeting after seeing and looking very closely at the bike and how we would want to adapt it to fit to this challenge. We ended up taking off both wheels, the seat, some of the gears, brakes, handles, and a whole bunch of screws and bolts!

Last Saturday, Anisha, Ashwin, my dad, and I went to the first trial of this challenge. We didn't exactly have anything big to test out but we tried a scale we have, a big cardboard tube, and a orange juice container made into a sort of GoBagger (by cutting off the bottom of the container). We tried all three of these items but none of them helped us that much with getting 5.5-6.5 pounds of sand into a bag! However, we did get some good ideas just by seeing the huge pile of sand and actually trying some of our ideas out instead of just brainstorming.

The odd thing about this trial was that the only ONE team (out of around 10 teams total who came to the trial) had a device to try out! In all past years, there have been many more teams trying out their devices, even at the first trial! And we usually have something to try out by now. Hmmm, I wonder if this says something about the challenge being a little too challenging... Oh, well actually, there was another team who had something to try out (a broomstick and a dust pan..).

I talked with the woman who is one of the people in charge of the Tech Challenge and asked her if we could get more sandbags. She said to just email her and ask her for 5 more so we would then have our limit of sandbags. I then asked her if we could get more than 10 sandbags because we know we want to try out and modify a bag or two. The woman said she hadn't thought about it and said she WOULD think about it.. so I'll email her and see what she says. I'm hoping that she'll get us more than 10 sandbags because we really might want to modify them in some way (and I know other teams will want to modify theirs as well). I guess that's something that they need to think of.

After we tried out our device-type-things we walked around the Tech a little bit and saw some interesting exhibits. Then, we walked to the car and drove home (well, my home) and Matthew and his dad were waiting for us since Matthew couldn't come to the trial but could come a little later. Now with the whole team, we talked about what we saw at the trial and bounced some more ideas off each other. I can tell we're all ready to start building stuff and stop talking about it, so we're having another meeting this coming weekend (unfortunately, without Ashwin) and hopefully we'll start MAKING something!

Work in Progress (3/8/06)
-After the meeting on the 5th, it was decided that we start trying to get some prototypes of various design possibilities started. We still have a range of ideas and have yet to narrow down our choices or really focus on one way of solving the challenge. I chose to attempt to replicate a weighing device or some sort of scale to ensure that only around 6 pounds of sand was put into each bag. The design would work like a large funnel with two sheets that could block off flow of sand. We could measure out how much of the funnel was taken up by 6 pounds of sand and then mark that portion off. By putting the two sheets on the bottom and above that mark we could control the flow of sand to ensure the right amount reached the bag. by putting the bottom sheet at the end of the funnel in place we would start collecting sand. Once the sand reached the 6 pound mark the top would be covered and the bottom opened. This would make sure that only 6 pounds of sand was dumped. Once the sand was emptied, the bottom could be closed again and the top opened to let in 6 more pounds...i can't seem to upload a picure of what im talking about....hmhmhmhm....ill try adding another post so you can see it.. other wise you're stuck with your imagination...

to bring for next week's meeting and the first trial:
-bleach bottle for using a kind of GoBagger kind of thing
-tie for bag (some way to modify bag)
-scale to practice weighing bags
-sandbags!

To do next week at the trial:
-look at others ideas to get our own ideas!
-ask for more bags and ask if we can get more bags so we can try modifying bags without ruining our only bags.
-whoever can come to the trial should come so we can do these two things.

Hello everybody. Today we had many ideas, but not one set idea. what were those ideas you ask? They were all kind of good but they had flaws. nothing struck us as perfect. but what is in this world? i'd settle for good strong maybe. the only good strong maybe is a shovel and something . we're going to try the bag with our hands. my advice is that people should just fill bags before. one idea was to use a little the tong like thing that's kind of like a leg press that you use your legs to power. one problem is that the challenge is on too big of a scale to use battery powered stuff and too small of a scale to use heavy machinery. however, using ones legs is an infinitely preferable option to use!