When I had to make the first prototype of my egg car I completed it for the first testing of the egg car. For the first prototype as seen in the above pictures I had the base and wheels and axles completed as well as the body of the car and one safety feature of a seat belt and I had a chair for the egg car. This was all I had for the first testing. Some things that I would need to add later on were things such as another safety feature, windows, and a door. Prior to the making of the first prototype, I was experiencing difficulties with the wheels of my egg car, so in order to fix this I replaced the wheels with my brothers old toy car wheels. My plan for testing the egg car was to have all the parts of my egg car completed up to date then be ready for the first testing by then. This was what I did. The testing was that the car was sent down a ramp and put through a collision with the wall. The cars performance was in my opinion successful because it seemed to go down the ramp and not fall over and my addition of the passenger compartment I realized would keep much of the damage of reaching the egg. However, something I did notice was that the cardboard from the base of the car was slightly touching the ramp and this I knew that I should fix because if not the performance of my car would be hindered. I would later make iterations based on the problems I noticed with the first prototype to improve the second prototype and the second testing.
Category: Physics Egg Car
**Blog 05 – Creating a prototyping and a testing plan of a specific feature
In the process of making the egg car there were many problems that I encountered while building different parts and features of the egg car. One part of the egg car with which I was building that I had trouble with was while making the base of the egg car. Though I have talked about the base in one of my previous blog posts which if my memory serves me correctly was either blog post 1 or 2. To begin to make the egg car the first part that we needed to build in order make the structure of the egg car was the base. I have never until now have made an egg car let alone a car. So when starting to build the base of the car I realized that I had no idea how to build the base and I had no idea what the base of an egg car looked like. So in class while we were starting on building the egg car or planning on how to make it, I needed to plan it first. In order to make the base of the egg car, something I knew was that I won’t be able to understand how to build the base of the egg car without knowing how it looks. So as a first action instead of reading about how to make a base of a car, I decided to look at images of the structure and base of a car. Doing this only did I learn how to make the base. In all honesty I really don’t remember reading any articles on how to build the base. Instead all that I did was I looked at images. After my first time building the base I realized that the problem with the base was the wheels didn’t work properly. I realized this when I tested the egg car on the ground and I realized that one or two wheels seemed to roll, but the other two didn’t. To fix this problem I knew that I would either need to make the wheels or go with the plan that I had before of using the wheels from one of my brothers old toy cars. I was running out of time and I didn’t know what kind of material would be good in making the wheels. In this I decided to make the decision of using my brothers toy car wheels. I later tested this when I rolled it on the ground at home and then there was also the first prototype test when my about complete egg car was tested. The wheels worked!
**Blog 06 – Reflecting on Lessons Learned
After completing your open house presentation, what have you learned? After completing my open house presentation I learned that when talking to those that you are presenting to you should make eye contact and I also learned that though it seems hard at first and it is, but each time you do it, it gets better and your nervousness goes away.
What did you learn about the overall process? While making the egg car through the overall process I learned that building an egg car is difficult in many ways and that there are various things that you need to do in order to build a complete egg car. Once you build different parts of the egg car then you would test it and come to find out a whole list of other problems. To solve these problems you would need to make iterations. This process is the design thinking process, which is very useful in presenting the final product.
What did you learn about yourself? In this I learned about myself that I am resilient in some ways and then also impatient sometimes. I am resilient because while making the egg car I would be resilient in making different parts of it and also in making it. However, I noticed that when I was making my egg car that I am impatient as well because I want everything done quickly, but if you are too quick it can cause damage to your work and if you are too slow it can cause damage to your grade. So, it is important to keep up with your work, but not rush or fall behind.
What will you take from this experience to make the next 20 days of school more successful? To make the next 20 days of school more successful from this experience I can take out the fact when I am doing my final project I will come up with an initial plan to follow and do it according to this. In the process of doing this I will make iterations and make my final product like I did in making the egg car.
What will you take from this experience to be more successful next year? To be more successful next year I will take out of this experience something to me which is important is to be a little more risk taking because you get have really great experiences that are new to you that when you are about to do it or when you find out that you need too do it you would feel like you just had a heart attack, but when it come to the moment that you do it and you finish it, you are proud of yourself for doing something that you unless you had to do it you would never have done.
What advice would you give to next year’s freshman about their final presentations? To next year’s freshman the advice that I would give them about their final presentation is for them not be nervous. Though this is easier said than done, I would tell them that I was extremely nervous, but if you can come to high school and make new friends and talk to them then you can talk to others who are just there to observe and learn about your project just for what it would seem like, a moment.
What advice would you give to next year’s freshman about their egg cars and blog posts? To next year’s freshmen the advice that I would give them about their egg cars and their blog posts is in making their egg cars, to have an idea first of how to make each part like the base. Follow the deadlines. Make sure to make each part of the car by the time it is due and then later go and make iterations. This way you will meet your deadlines in time and you wont be behind your project, and so that you will have an idea or some kind of structure for each part. For their blog posts I would tell the freshman to look at the rubrics for each blog post. I would tell them not to look at any of the other parts of the rubric other than the advanced proficient parts because this way they are trying to get the best grade possible. After looking at the rubric, just follow it and include what it asks into your blog posts.
**Car Prototype # 2
The first prototype has been made and now this is the second and final prototype.
To make the final prototype I noticed the many various changes that would have to be made to the egg car. Based on the tests we conducted and based on the feedback I received from my peers when I actually got to making the car I had to make these changes as well as some other changes. One change that my peers suggested in the egg car, for the sake of its appearance was to add windows. For this as you can see in the picture above I added windows which are made from polythene wrapping paper. Another change that my peers suggested, again for the sake of appearance was to cover the cardboard of the egg car with construction paper, to make it look more marketable and presentable. Which from the pictures above the results are visible. Finally another suggestion that my peers made was to fix the bottom of my egg car because they as well as me we noticed that the cardboard from the base of my car was slightly touching the ramp, so this needed to be fixed. In the process of adding the last few touches to my car to make it complete I encountered a problem. The problem that I encountered was that I had a problem with one of my safety features. This so happened to be the air bag. The problem with the air bag was that I had a good plan of building the air bag, but I just didn’t know how to build it or rather I didn’t know how to build it to work in my egg car. In my egg car looking at the above pictures you can see that I have a long passenger compartment. This is made out of cardboard. So, when I would try to think of some way to get the air bag to work I realized that my plan wouldn’t work because the passenger compartment cardboard was too hard. After spending time of thinking of materials and ways for the air bag to work I finally just added a balloon in the inside of the egg car under the passenger compartment. To my surprise when I woke up the next morning I was informed by my dad that the balloon had deflated. I did to meet one of the requirements of this project need to have a minimum of two safety features. I wasn’t very anxious because now I only had the seat belt as the safety feature because from the reading I did during class there was an article that talked about a passenger compartment and how this would be able to bring less damage to a person riding the car. So it was okay because the quite frustrating, but somewhat helpful passenger compartment had come to help my safety feature problem. Through this process something that I learned about design thinking was that sometimes you really need to plan out the parts of the project which you are doing. You also many times need to test your designs and see for yourself whether the plans that you think would work actually does work. Something that I learned about safety feature was that they really are useful and they are quite brilliant things invented and thought up of people to save other peoples as well as their own lives.
Blog Post 4 – Revising Prototype Based on Testing Results
Doing the first testing of my first egg car prototype the egg car went down the ramp and it hit the wall, thankfully it stayed in one piece and didn’t fall over. It was also able to roll down the ramp and it did not slide. These facts were good because it showed that my egg car met the constraints of rolling and the egg car was also no greater than 10 inches. However, by the actual testing there are some more requirements that my egg car needs to follow. With the first testing something that I realized was that my egg car while going down the ramp it was a little slow and it also seemed like the bottom of its base where there was cardboard was partly touching the ramp which can slow down the egg car so it might be something that I need to fix because it is also important for my egg car to be high performing. In reality as well when you look at actual cars the base of the car is not touching the ground like the wheels of the car are. This is because if the base of the car is touching the ground chances are the car instead of rolling would be dragging itself along the road.
Using some of the planning sheets that my teacher provided us with, one safety feature that I decided to include in my egg car was an occupant compartment. After doing this I noticed that this helped the inside of the car where the egg would have been not to receive any damage because since my car had a somewhat long occupant compartment, damage wasn’t able to reach the middle of the car where the passenger would be. In class regarding this part of the car that could serve less damage to the passenger we read an article by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, 2009 it mentions that “The second physical factor affecting injury likelihood is vehicle size, specifically the distance from the front of a vehicle to its occupant compartment. The longer this is, the lower the forces on the occupants… If one car’s front end is long enough to crush twice as much as another car’s in a barrier crash at the same speed, its restrained occupants will experience half as much force as the people in the smaller car because it takes them twice as long to stop.” This meaning that since one car (car #1) mentioned it has a longer front part if in a frontal crash with another car (car #2) which might have a shorter frontal part car #1 would likely get less damage because since it has a longer front it would take them longer to stop.
After adjusting some things like the base of my car I need to next add windows to the car which I am planning to use polythene wrapping paper and I also need to elaborate more on my safety features by fixing the air bags, with which I became aware that my air bags through the first prototype didn’t really do much and wouldn’t in its present state support the egg well. I also planned the opening of my car in the back so it would be like a ramp of an ambulance where the ramp would open and through there I can put my egg into and take it out of the car. This decision was made after my realization that if I used some other complex way to get the car in and out I would damage the car and break the cardboard.
My first prototype of the egg car: 
Blog Post 3 – Documenting Construction Process
1st Post: https://jerusha22.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/hello-world/
2nd Post: https://jerusha22.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/physics-egg-car/
I am now in the process of making an egg car as a school project. To know more what this is you can check my first two posts linked above. Getting back to the egg car this was my egg car a few days ago… This showing the base and wheels of my then egg car.
However, now some new iterations have been made to this…
The first picture shows something different from the pictures above because I made iterations to the base. Unfortunately, the bobbins I used for the first car base worked well, but they were bothersome because the bobbin wheels were not all rolling. Instead, for the second base with the help of my dad I decided to use wheels from my brothers broken toy car as the wheels, and my dad had the idea of using some wire to hold the wheels in place and he later had to help me do this. The next picture shows a new addition to the egg car which is the seat of the egg. This I made out of cardboard and the box was made out of paper. Inside the box are some cotton balls so that the egg would have something soft to fall on. On top of the seat I added some clear plastic wrap to the top of the seat where the egg will sit. I decided not to use cardboard or anything like this because I figured that if you used cardboard the egg might slide from the cardboard. Finally, the 3rd and 4th picture show one safety feature that we could add into our egg car. As of now this seat belt is my only safety feature, but I have yet to put other features on the car. This idea was something that my dad and I both had and we mixed our ideas and came up with this. The 3rd picture shows the front view of the seat belt and the 4th picture shows the back of the chair and how the seat belt is attached. My egg car follows 4 out of the 6 project constraints. This is because my egg car is no more than 10 inches on each of its sides, it rolls smoothly instead of sliding, it has an easily accessible seat for for the egg, and my egg car does not contain any materials that could shatter into sharp pieces. I designed my car to this point by looking at images of cars their structures and their different parts and an easy way to do this is to go online and search up images. In my design process of making the egg car so far, the biggest problem I had was with the wheels which after this there were some concerns in constructing different parts of the egg car like the chair, but I started to get some ideas on how I might be able to build it and then the parts started coming together.
Blog Post 2 – Discussing The Influence Of The Sources On Your Design
We have now started to build the egg car and our first part is to build the base and wheels of the egg car. In making the car we made our own design and plans of our egg car. My plan consisted of using different material such as 4 straws, 8 barbecue sticks, cardboard, blu tag, tape, 1 scissor and 4 thread bobbins. I first started on making the wheels and axle. To do that I needed the straws the wheels would go on. Since the straws aren’t steady and can bend easily I needed to add a barbecue stick inside the straws so that it wouldn’t bend. Doing this I realized that one barbecue stick wasn’t enough to go inside the straw because it would slide out so I had to put in two barbecue sticks into each straw. Next I needed to add the wheels so I took the bobbins and my plan was to put the bobbin through two straws, but there was a slight problem. The straws did fit into the bobbins, but they were fitting too well. I noticed that when two straws hold the bobbins, the bobbins don’t actually roll, but they slide, which was a bad thing for me because one of the requirements of making the egg car was that the egg car needed to roll, not slide. After some thinking I realized the reason the bobbins wouldn’t roll was because the hole where the straws were put into the bobbin was too tight, so the bobbin couldn’t roll. So, I decided to just use one straw for the bobbin and left it at that. Once doing this I realized another problem, now that only one straw is inside the bobbin, the bobbin would slide off the straw because the hole of the bobbin was too big. I needed something that can block the hole of the bobbin so that it won’t slide through the straw. Just then I remembered something that I had in the house that would be good for this job. It was blu tag. Like shown in the pictures, above those clay looking like things on the sides of the bobbins is the blu tag holding the bobbins from sliding through the straws. Then I just added two more straws between the other straws, with the bobbin wheels. Next I simply taped some cardboard on the wheels and axle both top and bottom. That concludes the making of the base, wheels, and axle of the egg car. In making the base wheels, and axle of the egg car I had struggles. So I decided to research on this by looking at parts of the car and more specifically the part of the base, wheels, and axle. While, drawing what I saw I visualized how to make the base. I realized that in reality things like the base could be put under the wheels and axle, instead of the wheels and axles going into the base. If I need to find more information about making the car I know that I could research about the parts of a car and the structure, to make the egg car. In my egg car plan, things that I want to add is for the egg car to have parts like a little chair for the egg so the egg can sit there. Make a seat belt out of rubber bands. As well as adding airbags inside the car and adding a half door outside the side of the car to get the egg into and out of the car without the egg falling out. At present this is my plan, but I might need to iterate on things later on.
Hello world!
In physics class the challenge that we are now working on is a challenge of designing and making a car or more specifically an egg car. The purpose of this project is to make a car which will hold a raw egg and will be put through a crash test and our job is to make the egg car with various features in an attempt to keep the egg from cracking, in the course of the test. Our overall challenge is, to keep the egg from cracking, however there serves a purpose for us doing this experiment and this relates to real life where there are many car crashes and often people are injured we in making this car need to include components in making this car to fully and correctly serve its true purpose of keeping the passenger safe. Meaning that we need to make an egg car that is both safe and high performing and we need to also make this car creative and attractive so that it is appealing to people to increase its marketability. During class we were given articles that talked about features that could be included in the car to keep the passenger safe. Features we read about were seat belts which can reduce the momentum of the passenger and other features like crumple zones which are parts of the car which are meant to be destroyed in order for energy to be wasted on the parts of the car that are being damaged rather than the person who will now have less damage done to them because of the energy used in damaging the other parts of the car. As well other features like air bags and extending the front part of the car. My initial goal for this project is for the egg in my egg car to go through the crash test, but for the egg to still be in one whole after it and to also make the car safe and high performing. I hope that my design would be good in the way that it is built properly where it has all the other features that we learned about that we could possibly use in our egg car. Some hopes I have is for the different features to work well I would also need to be able to add the different features to the car properly and make sure that the different parts would do what it is initially intended to do and keep the egg from cracking. Other hopes of mine include things like I want my car to be creative and look very appealing to others. Regarding this project my only question as of now is to know whether I am allowed to wrap something around the raw egg. Through this challenge what I would like to learn is the way to make a safe egg car and to learn more in depth of how adding different features to the egg car will keep the egg safe.
jerusha22 