Creative Thinking

In the chain reaction lab, I used creative thinking to come up with ideas on how to make things move and connect. We didn’t have a set plan, so I had to try different ways to make the energy transfer work using Hot Wheels, dominoes, and other objects. When something didn’t work, I thought of new ways to fix it. It took a lot of trying, changing, and testing, But in the end, it helped me build a working design although it didn’t really came out to what I expected.

Design

I think the overall design worked fine. However, this is not my proudest assignment since the design didn’t turn out to be what I expected it to be because of different reasons such as teamwork and distractions. However, despite the negative energy flowing among my group, i tried my best to stay calm and lead my group. I also made sure to assign everyone with some sort of task so that it kept everyone busy for at least a little while. We listened to each other’s ideas as a group, which helped to create our final design overall. 

Initial end result

Yea the initial end-result did turn out to be the same for my machine. I’ve made changes through the first and second energy transfer, but I’ve kept the result the same since the start and it was to drop a ball into a cup which triggers the launcher and shoots the car into the pins. I liked this idea since it was always consistent, and I thought that the ball that lands in the cup and which transfer energy to trigger the launcher was an interesting and unique idea. 

What would I do differently

If I were to do this again, i would definitely work by myself or with a new group. Although it could be great working in groups and getting ideas from your peers, it’s hard to be the leader of the group when some of us don’t really participate or want to contribute. I think that if I were to work on this myself, my final design would turn out to be somewhat close to my original design and with each design it would be an improvement but not a simpler design.