Week 8: May 18th, 2016

Today was the day that each group switch their lab manuals with another group to test it out. Our group switched with a group that's manual dealt with designing a catapult arm out of K'NEX pieces. While Bryce went with the other group to help navigate the fish feeder manual, the rest of the team spent the lab period building a lever. The manual that we received was well written and straight to the point. The only qualifications that our design had to meet was that it had to hold a 2 inch diameter sphere that weighs 400 grams. Our final design of the arm is shown below.

Figure 11: Catapult Arm for Other Project

After the other team worked on our manual, we realized that we needed more steps that provided more guidance in our procedure. We assumed a general knowledge of circuits and programming that the group working on our manual did not possess. After editing our manual in the specific section that the other group worked on, we continued to write more of the manual that did not need to be tested. The other parts of our lab manual include the brainstorming of a mechanical component, building it, and testing the mechanical and electrical component together.

Next week we will work to test our final design and finalize our manual. Additionally we will continue to work on our final presentation.