The passion project was a huge project where students in STEAM from all grades got to create inventions and creations of things they loved. It was a 3 month project that had lots of challenges but also lots of upsides to it as well. I first started thinking of my project and what I’m passionate about and first thought of basketball. Adding onto that I wanted to make an arcade game featuring basketball. That’s when I came up with the idea of making a basketball arcade machine that has a moving hoop and catapult as well.
After that I started designing parts for my base on Fusion 360. Then I had them laser cut on the laser box. Then I started designing a 3d catapult, balls, hoop, and connector. Most of them turned out well but I had to reprint them as they were either too big or too small.
I then started working on my motor which I used from one of my old electricity kits that I had laying around at home. I then added a wheel on the motor that spinned a popsicle stick connected to the connector pulling a string back and forth. The string is connected to the hoop to move it back and forth. I had a problem with the motor being too fast and wasted my time trying to slow it down when I didn’t need too. I also had to glue it in place multiple times to find the optimal spot to place it. Then I had to to switch the disk I was using as it was too flimsy. Then I attached the popsicle stick and connector and tried to get the hoop to move. It took the whole weekend and some more to get it to work and after all of that I had to use a different hoop as the one I printed which was a little disappointing.
During the weekend before the STEAM Fair I had to make my poster board for the fair. I bought a poster board, colored paper, and some supplies for the poster board. I also drew on images and printed out images for my poster board. Then I used some of the paper to make a border and title.
Finally after hours of working on the poster board and project I was finally finished. It turned out really well and I was finally ready for the STEAM fair. It was really cool to see so many projects and people and having my friends beside made the experience even better. A lot of people came to see my project which was pretty cool to see people liking my project. I got a lot of positive feedback from the people visiting which was nice. My favorite part though was the pizza and pop as I was so hungry. All in all I had a pretty good time at the STEAM fair and even though I won’t be in STEAM next year I found the STEAM fair pretty fun.
