Space Light machine
Created By: Aleksey (4rth), Victoria (1st)
from Osceola Science Charter School
Our Project:
We love to learn about Space, Robots and Energy. We believe that knowledge is the light, and we want to turn that light on for everyone to be become interested in education and engineering. Our final goal for the ETM is to turn that light on.
The link to the video:
https://youtu.be/VcOdwQm78Tk?feature=shared
Challenges we faced:
We started to build our ETM backwards. First, we had the part where all the dominoes fall, and car goes down and hits the ball. We couldn’t figure out first how to make it fall and hit the switch to make the lamp turn on. After we came up with the tube idea, we faced another challenge how to make the ball jump straight into the tube. After fixing that part we started to think about the middle part of how to make the dominoes fall. We came up with the idea of the ball falling into the cup and the thread pulling the dominos. But it took us a while to think of the connection and make the dominoes fall forward not backwards, our favorite statue astronaut on the moon came in handy. The hardest part was to make the starting point. The original idea was to make robot hit the ping-pong ball with the rocket, and the ping-pong ball would hit the flag and make the car move. But it didn’t work that way. The robot was pushing the ping-pong ball instead of hitting it with the rocket. So, we decided to change it a little – attach the rope to the ping-pong ball and then attach the rope to the rocket with the piece of tape. Operate the robot with the remote and have it ride back and pull the rope, so the ball would swing and hit the car. But as much as we tried it didn’t happen. The ball would not touch the flag at all, or was not hitting hard enough. So, we tried to make the ping-pong ball heavier and attached one more ball and then one more to the rope with the tape. Finally, it worked after so many tries!!!!
Energy Transfers Explanations:
Energy Transfer 1: The robot is operated by the remote, the battery uses the chemical energy and converts it to the electrical energy to move the robot’s motor and then converts it to the kinetic energy when robot starts moving and pulling the rope with ping-pong balls.
Energy Transfer 2: The ping – pong balls hit the flag, which pulls the rope to move the blocks, this makes the car move
Energy Transfer 3: The car switches the potential energy into the kinetic energy and moves forward until it hits the pop-it
Energy Transfer 4: Pop-it falls on LEGO astronaut.
Energy Transfer 5: LEGO Astronaut falls on the marble ball and makes the marble roll.
Energy Transfer 6: The marble’s potential energy turns into kinetic energy; marble rolls down the carboard towel roll and falls into the cup.
Energy Transfer 7: The cup falls down pulling the thread, that is attached to the dominoes and makes the dominoes’ potential energy switch to the kinetic energy and fall.
Energy Transfer 8: The dominoes fall and touch the small wooden truck.
Energy Transfer 9: The truck’s potential energy changes into kinetic energy and it starts moving down the hill of the wooden tracks and hits the marble ball.
Energy Transfer 10: The marble jumps onto the tube using its gravitation energy and hits the light switch.
Energy Transfer 11: The light switch uses its electrical energy and turns on the light in the lamp.
Here is the video of the Energy Transfer Machine.
The tools used:
OKK Robot Building toy operated by the batteries and the remote control
3 ping-pong balls and a rocket
cotton thread (rope)
carton box
flag made of plastic and attached by the straw to the carboard
a mechanic car
Jenga blocks/dominoes
pop-it
LEGO astronaut
2 marble balls (1 big, 1 small)
carton paper towel roll
plastic bottle (bottom part for the cup, top part for the tube)
astronaut on the moon statue
wooden tracks
a wooden truck
building block parts (for the tube)
an astronaut lamp
tape (silver duck tape)
sleeping grandma toy (just to hold the rope)
This was amazing! You did so well on the machine. For next year, what are you thinking for the changes or additions? Is it the same theme for next year or do you have another theme? Maybe you can have outfits to match? Little space suits? Amazing job!
What a great job! Congratulations guys! Tons of creativity!
I love that you worked together to figure out so much! Great job!
The theme song/chant during the video was top-notch. I liked that you separated out the steps and you have pictures to go with each one. Well done!
What an amazing project! Your interest and dedication really shine through. Not everybody has the resilience to work through challenges that inevitably arise. So proud!
Yours is a very cute team and a cute ETM. I love the excitement and I am sure you had a lot of fun building it.
What a great theme! Using the things that your team likes best and including them as part of your machine was a great idea. I like that you listed your challenges and worked through them. Nice work!