Drafting – 3D Printed Balloon Car

First design didn’t get to testing due taro a misprint in the wheels.

My second design i worked on it with Aditya and this one worked after multiple trails the car traveled an average of 6.8 centimeters.

Steam Boat race at Hyde Creek

Building Process

For our boat, we were given two large pieces of cardboard. to start we took the first piece and folded the ends into front of the boat, and we folded the excess cardboard into the left wall of the boat, then we used the second piece to create the rest of the walls for the boat lastly we cut out a large piece of the cardboard out and put into the haul to create a reinforced bottom. we connected all the pieces together with duct tape and water proofed almost the entire boat by covering it with packing tape. our goal was to spread the person weight out across the boat, which meant we had to make very long and it eliminated the idea of comfortably fitting more than one person in the boat.

What factors contributed to the success (or failure) of your race?

In my opinion, the biggest factor to our boat sinking was the length of the boat. we made it way too long which caused the center of the boat to weaken under pressure when placed in the water, which lead to boat slowly starting fold. if we had maybe shortened the boat it might have been more sturdy and stable allowing to stay a float longer. additionally, it could have made it easier to comfortably fit more that one person with out having it bend in the center.

What could you improve about your boat design?

I think one big improvement would be to again shorten the length of the boat to reduce the risk of folding under pressure.
Additionally, if we had kept the longer design we could have added rolled up cardboard beams that stretched from one end of the boat the other to push back against the bending at the center. Another option would be to make the haul of the boat curved which would make the building process a lot harder, which could work better than having two beams stretch across the boat.

How did the mass of the paddler affect your race? Consider density &  buoyancy

Our original plan was to spread the persons body weight across the surface of the boat. this was meant to help with buoyancy by reducing pressure in the center of the boat. However, because the boat was extremely long, it didn’t maintain its shape, and when it started to fold it started to concentrate the persons weight into the center of the boat.

Final thoughts

Overall, our design had some good ideas but it could have been improved if we didn’t make the boat so long, or even if we did focus on making it sturdy enough so it doesn’t fold on the persons weight. Despite all of those issues with the boat I had so much fun constructing the boat with my friends and in the end i didn’t really care that we lost, to me it was just a fun time for me and my friends to express our creativity.

Passion Project Presentation 

For our presentation we were given two topics Biology, and engineering, and we found inspirations for both of our designs on instructables.com.

Biology

For the biology part we chose “Beer Bread”, using the yeast from the beer to serve as the yeast for the bread, we chose this because yeast is a living organism, and no, it doesn’t get you drunk, in fact a lot of foods that you probably eaten have had alcohol cooked into. people just add alcohol to food to give it an extra layer of flavouring.

Engineering

the best design that stood out to us was a solar powered 3 wheel buggy with a steel frame, ill try to explain as much about the buggy as possible because there’s way to many details and littles things in the original post.(If interested go check out Mech Engineering Mike on Instructables.com for more details) The creator built everything from scratch, the frame, the breaks, and even the solar panels that powered the car. we chose this because all of the components of the car check off the engineering part of our project.

Leadership

For leadership we came up with idea to encourage more people to join the steam program, by making the steam fair a bigger event, starting fundraisers, and maybe putting up posters to spread more awareness. We chose this as our leadership topic as it encourages others to try to join the steam program or gives more enthusiasm for those who want to join.