Over the 4 STEAM classes (math, science, tech ed, and drafting) and ICT 9 I have done a lot of projects this year, and even a few in socials and English. I had made a video compiling my best things made or worked on while in the drafting room in February for a different project, but made the very silly decision to not just upload that to this page. Instead, I have videos, photos and descriptions of way more than necessary. I hope you can see a bit of my effort in these projects and learn a satisfactory amount about what I have done over this whole year.
Math
At this time the only project that is a bit more interesting a unique that I have made is my exponents game. Using what I learned about python from ICT 9, I made a simple game where you read a question and enter your answer to get points a progress. This is a two player game with small visual elements to show the progression of the game. At the beginning, if you say that you have not played before, the game explains the rules.
The story of the game is that there are two knights (the players) going on a Quest for Powers (the name of the game) and whoever gets to the castle first gets the power of powers (and wins the game). I originally planned to make this as a physical board game, and had started to design the board and planned to use the laser cutter and sticker cutter to make it and the pieces, but then we went on break and I really wanted to hand this in on time so I just made it digitally. The game now has a lot less visual elements, but I did make a small thing that would show up after both players took a turn to show how close they were to the castle (seen below). The game is also less random now, as while I could make a die I was unable to figure out how to shuffle the questions. Overall, I worked hard on this game and tried to make it difficult and unique, and I used a lot of stuff I only learned this year and learned a bit more logic.
To look at the code/play the game download and install something to run python files (python, thonny, etc.) if you don’t have it already, and then download the game file and open it using the software.
Science
We did a variety of cool things in science this year, we learned about salmon, electricity, DNA and reproduction. I have photos and descriptions of my favourite projects from science and science honours right next door on my science 9 portfolio.
I didn’t put that many projects on there, as I tried to keep it relating to honours projects, but there was one activity I liked quite a bit that I would rather put here. For learning about DNA we got to extract some DNA from strawberries, which was fairly simple put an overall fun and interesting task that could prove to be useful in the future of our learning. I took a few photos of the event:
Tech Ed.
In tech ed. we all had to do the same projects, but some we could be more creative on. Here are my best 3 projects:
Picture frame + center punch art
On this project I got to learn how to use the table saw and the table router. First I sketched out a medically inaccurate human skull on paper and copied it onto my sheet of metal with some carbon paper. I tried to follow the lines and make the indents consistent, but there are some inconsistencies. Then I cut four pieces of wood and used the table saw to make the pieces of wood fit together into the frame shape and then glued them into the frame shape. When the glue was dry I sanded all the sides of the frame and went along the inside and outside of the front of the frame with the table router (made the edges more curved), and then stained it (made the colour and patterns in the wood more visible). Then I nailed my metal art into the frame and took in home!
This project was very fun I got to be creative when choosing what to put on the metal and what I could do with my frame on the table router and to stain or to paint it. I liked learning how to glue the pieces together so they would be very strong, as it could be useful for things other than a picture frame, and learning a little bit from working with the metal, and while waiting for the glue on the frame to dry I made a small charm for my sisters necklace using the skills I had learned.
CO2 Car
For this project we had to make the cars within certain dimensions, but within the limitations we could decide the size and design of the cars. This was a good chance to work on machine and hand sanding and to use the bandsaw (scary), and we get to spray paint the car the colour of our choice and can choose to put vinyl decorations on it. I sprayed a second coat of light blue on the day I write this so I couldn’t get a good photo, but will take one once I have done my final measurements and fully assembled it. I do however have a record of the weight and drag (I was unclear what the wind tunnel measures in but I think the 50/80 was the wind speed) at different stages in making my car.
date weight (grams) drag (50) drag (80)
| 11-May | 64.5 | 37 | 66 |
| 13-May | 57.7 | 27 | 51 |
| 13-May | 55.9 | 33 | 60 |
| 25-May | 55.8 | 32 | 60 |
| 27-May | 55.7 | 32 | 60 |
| 31-May | 54.1 | 29 | 51 |
Ring
Making rings was our first actual project. We had to draw a few designs, measure our finger size, drill a hole into the metal and then use the hack saw and some files to shape and smooth the rings, and polished them. I chose my second design for its shape, but didn’t follow the design exactly as I didn’t cut any lines into the top. I spent almost every flex block working on my ring during the month or so we had to work on it, as I really enjoy working with hand tools in tech ed. and I wanted the ring to be the best that I could make it. The different shape made it harder to smooth and polish, and I had to go back a few steps as I decided after getting the ring almost done to put a different colour of metal in the top. After that I had to smooth the top and polish the whole ring again. It was worth it though as the ring is very pretty and smooth now, although I cannot currently find it.
Drafting
I felt that we could have learned more in drafting this year. We started to work on a big project our first day of drafting class and most of are actually lesson were near the end of the year, and project were cancelled (didn’t use spheros). I think a lot of this was because of covid-19, as things had to be rescheduled after winter break and large groups of people were not recommended. We did get to do some fairly interesting projects and had optional projects as well (though in my opinion we shouldn’t have started a big project the first week in class and instead used that time to learn about software and tools and so we could have used them more effectively and planned things out better).
Big Projects
Nature Collage
For this project our group first had two weeks in the tech ed. room (but only about one week of work as we had to study a take a safety test before we could work with the machines) and then two weeks in the drafting room, where everyone choose one machine and could only work with that for this project. We had to research about a type of ecosystem and make a model showing how it is affected by humans. My group choose the temperate rainforest (as we live in one) and my machine was the CNC router.
I made the nameplate for our model on the CNC router and made some ferns, out of ferns. On the nameplate there are western hemlocks and various ferns that cannot really be identified as any fern but they are meant to represent bracken ferns, and the ferns that are made out of fern are bracken ferns.
For the board I traced some images of ferns, an eagle and a western hemlock in autoCAD and exported each one as a PDF and imported them into VCarve. In VCarve I arranged the shapes and made them different depths so the would appear to be behind or in front of each other. I put in a title and a boarder around it to make it more clear and look better, and I put our names below it.
For the ferns a took pieces of fern from the ferns in front of my house and glued them together at the bottom and then they looked like a small version of the type of fern they were made of.
Salmon Project
We did this project basically right after the collage project, and even had a bit less time to do it, but it was a bit easier in my opinion as we knew a little more about the machines and software (although we had to use a different machine for this project), we started to have every other day in the drafting room instead of 2 weeks without it and then 2 weeks of it, which gave more time to figure out what you could do, plan ahead, and to work at home, and on this project we didn’t have to make one big thing as a group, so we could all focus on our own work and didn’t need to get their input as much. In groups we had to think of a bunch of ideas really fast (as a brainstorming method) and draw them on sticky notes, and when time was up we would look at them and try and explain them, which would help get rid of the ridiculous ideas, and eventually each person would choose an idea to design a model of the idea (the ideas all had to be meant to help salmon in some way (for some reason a lot of people had the idea of putting them in a tube to help them get upstream faster which I think is kinda funny)). At the end of the project we would go up in front of the class as a group an take turns presenting the idea with the model almost like a business pitch.
For my project I tried to design a filter that could safely filter bad stuff of the rivers the salmon are swimming in without hurting them. After redrawing the design a few times I started to make a model of the filter in blender so I could 3D print it. I had very little experience with blender (and still do) so this was difficult and took a lot of trial and error, but after that I feel fairly confident in my ability to extrude vertices. I originally tried to make a tube for the exit end of the filter, but as that proved to be quite difficult at the time and seemed like it could go wrong and be hard to fix, I ended up just making a water collection area that I could stick a tube into when printed. After finishing my work in blender I exported it and opened it up in TinkerCAD to see if there were any problems, which there were many, so I ended up going back and forth between blender and TinkerCAD for quite a while working out all the weird issues (faces not filled in, edges where there shouldn’t be). When it was done I printed it out at home and tried to use it to filter some water using the (used) materials from a water filter set I had at home. it didn’t go great as the filter was very small and so the layers of the filter were too close together and would often fall into the collected water at the bottom, but it did work a bit and if I made it on a larger scale with better materials it probably would’ve been fine.
Energy Saving
For this we as a group had to make a solar car, a wind turbine and a smart device to help you save energy. I worked with another person in my group to make the smart device.
Our smart device was a temperature recorder, so you could track the temperature of your house/building over time and see if you could reduce the amount of heating/cooling you use. We did not use any of the drafting machines to make this project. We used an Aduifruit circuit playground to make this, as it has built in lights and sensors. I used Thonny on my computer, the temperature sensor, and one of the LEDs, and made it so that every few seconds the computer records the temperature and the time, and flashes the light to show that it is doing something.
If I did this again I would try and learn more about the Aduifruit circuit playground and how to program it before starting on the project. I didn’t know very much and so could do very little. I would figure out how to use the other lights to show how hot it was or make a digital display to do the same.
Future Sustainable City
This project was about designing and making a model of a more ecofriendly and sustainable city, unfortunately we were supposed to make the city in Minecraft, in a high school class. The city had to have some renewable energy, recycling, green spaces, and public services, and each person had to my their own eco-friendly house (but you could work in groups on the city). I felt that the only real drafting learned in this project was from drawing the blueprints, but they didn’t even have to be that detailed or accurate as they were the first step. To get more experience out of this project I decided to do my blueprints in AutoCAD instead of on paper and to use Blender to make the models of my city and my house (half of a duplex).
My city (I worked alone, which is partly how I was able to work in blender instead of in Minecraft) is very small, encouraging people to walk instead of driving, but there is still roads and parking underground. My city does not generate its own power, it imports it from a large hydroelectric plant nearby, but most larger building have solar panels to supplement their power instead of taking a lot from the grid (the factories, one apartment complex, and the library/rec center). The city also has its own water supply (larger water tower) and reuses nutrient rich waste water for agriculture (shorter tower). My city also has three main areas for waste collection; a small area near the factories serves as place for the factories to easily dispose of their waste properly, and there is a recycling plant and waste collection area in the south-west corner of the city. The main feature of my city is that it is not very large, as to promote walking and because space is a resource we can’t make more of on Earth, and that it features lots of green areas and public spaces.
Duplex video tour:
Minor projects
Drawings
When I get my work back I will show it here
Stickers
I have designed to stickers in AutoCAD and cut them out on the sticker cutter. I have made a salmon and a steam train, as my groups name was ‘STEAM train’.
Embroidery
On the embroidery machine I made a patch inspired by the t-shirts my dad would print out and sell when he was in high school. It is supposed to look a lot like the Tommy Hilfiger logo.
English
For English we only have about 7 (1 poetry test, 3 test about stories, 2 paragraphs attached to the tests, and a speech) things marked/counting towards our grade so far, and have two more in just the last week of school (“podcast” project and a test about a Shakespeare play). The only interesting ones are the speech and the podcast.
Speech
We had to do spoken word poetry or a rant, so I did a rant about how Canada would probably be better if everyone’s DNA profile was analysed when they were born/became a citizen. This is really an exaggeration to make it more of a rant, but I do still believe that this would beneficial.