Ping Pong Ball Challenge

Our Principle of Engineering class has a design build challenge to transport a ping pong ball across a two feet table gap out of tape and one manila folder. We were given 16 minutes to make this contraption. 

We used a cup as a way to introduce the ball to the ramp, and a tongue depressor as a way to guide it towards the ramp and to get some momentum.

Our design was successful in that it went two feet and could possibly done an excess of that. 

2014 Super Advertising

Then a naked David Beckham commercial played...

- The Wonderful Pistachios commercials I enjoyed the most

- The fact that there were two commercials, but spread out between one commercial in between and that they played off the the first commercial and the commercial in the middle that wasn't there was clever and funny. Stephen Colbert is also always funny.

- It costed 6 million because there were two commercials, (one was half the full 30 seconds), just for the ad space alone. 

- Colbert was some thousands of dollars, there was a CGI eagle that probably costs some. So there were an addition of thousands on top of the 8 million. 

- They need to sell about 8 hundred thousand 

- I think people who want pistachios will buy pistachios. I never get really persuaded by advertising and I don't know if a lot are. 

Lego Robotics

Design, create, and program an autonomous vehicle with Lego Robotics. Modify designs to be able to maneuver through a 3 foot straight course, and then a bent course.

Straight Course

Test Course (3, 1 foot tiles)

Construction

In Action

Our design was rigid, but had a lot of force behind it and was able to even run over some obstacles. We could make it go on a loop and make it nonstop. It was relatively fast also.  

Bent Course

We played with the settings for individual wheel ports so that we didn't necessarily need to make it turn with specific turning programming, but different powers going straight turned out to be in a straight line.