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!
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!
posted by Cassie at 12:59 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home