Science Innovation Day

On innovation day I did the basic levers project with Isaac. This is our video:

Afterwards I did a reflection:

At the start of this project, I had been apprehensive that I would dislike this project, based on the subject, difficulty level, and projects itself. I knew I would find the physics part boring, the actual testing monotonous, and the slides extremely difficult. As the project went on, I was mostly proven correct. The slides were even harder than expected, the physics were actually a bit cool, but still boring, and the testing cae with a slew of problems. These problems I mentioned in the video: Because we measured the effort distance as point A to B, not following the path of the effort point. We had expected inaccuracies, so we accounted for them, but it was still annoying. I didn’t enjoy presenting this very much, because I find people watching me embarrassing. Even so, I would have rathered my dad watch it then not, but because of technical difficulties, he couldn’t. Isaac’s mom watched it, but she didn’t seem to enjoy it. A few things accounted for that, I think. I would have changed my methods of experimentation, so as not to have those inaccuracies, because it made me seem less professional in the video. Also, if I had had more time, I might have made the slideshow look better. I didn’t have time. If I had done this again, I would have spent more time on that. I also had just tried to do better. All that said, I’m happy with my mark for the effort I put into this, and if I had done more effort, I think I could have gotten 60ish.

I was supposed to make a compound machine. I didn’t. What I had planned on doing was making a better system for lifting the gym basketball net. I would have made a racheting system, using slopes, that moved easily in one direction but didn’t in the other. In the difficult direction, I would have had a gear system with a mechanical advantage of 2:1. In our current system, a lot of effort was used to actually move your arm. This would hopefully make the system better to use, more ergonomique, and superior in terms of effort used to distance.