Chain Reaction Project
Description:
Creating a chain reaction is more difficult than it seems, It takes patience & hard work. You wont be able to create something solo, but as a group & putting your ideas together you will be able to create a great product. Although you might get frustrated during the process, you will be able to accomplish the chain reaction as long as you try your best and not give up.
Defining the Problem
The point of this mini-project was to create a "chain reaction". For those of you who are unaware of what it is, its basically a structure that is created by various items that we collected from either our classes or our homes. This specific chain reaction had to have 10 transitions. A transition is the movement the creates one item to make the next item make another movement. A series of events each caused by the previous item by its acceleration. The acceleration is the force & speed that goes through the chain reaction to create movement to make the following object fall & create the next movement as well. For example, the marble would go down the pipe & hit a book, the book would fall and knock down the water bottle, so on and so forth. In our chain reaction the main objective was to incorporate the flipping of the coin.
Click here to watch the video of our final chain reaction.
The point of this mini-project was to create a "chain reaction". For those of you who are unaware of what it is, its basically a structure that is created by various items that we collected from either our classes or our homes. This specific chain reaction had to have 10 transitions. A transition is the movement the creates one item to make the next item make another movement. A series of events each caused by the previous item by its acceleration. The acceleration is the force & speed that goes through the chain reaction to create movement to make the following object fall & create the next movement as well. For example, the marble would go down the pipe & hit a book, the book would fall and knock down the water bottle, so on and so forth. In our chain reaction the main objective was to incorporate the flipping of the coin.
Click here to watch the video of our final chain reaction.
The Research and Design:
Our design mostly came from our own ideas because we wanted to be original. We watched some videos on chain reactions to get an idea of how they work. Although our ideas might have been used before we felt proud of ourselves for at least thinking to use it and not necessarily copy. I actually didn't do any other research besides watching videos. Our design was simple and didn’t have big objects. Our chain reaction consisted of little objects making little movements. A partner in our group spent time watching videos on how to make our chain reaction interesting and catch the viewers attention. She learned how to make a popsicle stick bomb. The popsicle stick bomb was used to create the coin flip. The coin would be at the end of the popsicle stick & the item right before it would set the bomb off & create the coin to flip. Which was great because the objective of the project was to make the coin flip.
Other than the popsicle stick bomb grabbing the viewers attention, there wasn't much that was as big as that. Our features were small objects such as dominos, toy cars, marble, books and more. Our chain reaction was simple and yet interesting because that fact that it was small and simple you had to play close attention to it in order to actually see the movement that's happening because all chain reactions move so quickly.
In my opinion research isn't a very important part in the process. Although it could be beneficial if you want to watch videos to get a better understanding on how chain reactions work and get ideas, but other than that, its fun to create your own ideas and watch yourself fail when and object doesn’t work to make the chain continue. So yes its beneficial but isn't mandatory in my perspective.
Other than the popsicle stick bomb grabbing the viewers attention, there wasn't much that was as big as that. Our features were small objects such as dominos, toy cars, marble, books and more. Our chain reaction was simple and yet interesting because that fact that it was small and simple you had to play close attention to it in order to actually see the movement that's happening because all chain reactions move so quickly.
In my opinion research isn't a very important part in the process. Although it could be beneficial if you want to watch videos to get a better understanding on how chain reactions work and get ideas, but other than that, its fun to create your own ideas and watch yourself fail when and object doesn’t work to make the chain continue. So yes its beneficial but isn't mandatory in my perspective.
The Prototype:
Before creating the 10 transition chain reaction, we created one with 5 transitions. Ofcourse both had fails. There were at times where we had to replace transitions because some didn't work. We did get upset but we knew not to give up. An object that we had to replace all the time was the book. If the book was to tall, it would fall all the time. If the book was to thick, it wouldn't fall at all because the water bottle wasn't strong enough to knock it down. Little problems like that during the process occurred to us & we just had to come up with a replacement. Coming up with the replacement was quite difficult because there was never a replacement that would do exactly what we needed it to do. Thankfully we found the perfect size book that was neither tall and skinny, or short and thick, it was just the right size.
Growth:
This project helped me have a stronger creative mindset. Working in groups might be difficult because sometimes group mates get off task and yes i am also guilty of that, but thats what group mates are for because if i’m getting off task my group mate is there to tell me to get focused. That was one challenge for me this project that i was able to overcome. A strength of mine this project was cooperation. My group and I worked well together, we were all able to get to know each other and see what we're each capable of doing.
This mini project was not only a project for practicing hands on activities but it was a way to gain experience working in group of 2-5 people. This project taught me about positivity. There were at times where my partners and i felt like we failed, which we did but we had to stay positive and come up with a new idea of how the chain reaction could work. Positivity is what strongly helped my group into thinking we can do this rather than saying I give up, and after many tries we were able to accomplish a 10 transition chain reaction. My group and i had failed a couple times and had to change our ideas, but once we got it to work we felt so proud of ourselves and that was a great feeling.
This mini project was not only a project for practicing hands on activities but it was a way to gain experience working in group of 2-5 people. This project taught me about positivity. There were at times where my partners and i felt like we failed, which we did but we had to stay positive and come up with a new idea of how the chain reaction could work. Positivity is what strongly helped my group into thinking we can do this rather than saying I give up, and after many tries we were able to accomplish a 10 transition chain reaction. My group and i had failed a couple times and had to change our ideas, but once we got it to work we felt so proud of ourselves and that was a great feeling.