Project Analysis and Commentary

Early American Energy Analysis and Commentary

Edison Moment:

Edison Moment: When given the task of creating our water powered plow device we assumed several things that would be true about the supplies given to us, thus making our design around parts that would not be possible. Out first moment revolved around initially not be able to use the VEX materials resulting in me being forced to find an alternative sprocket and chain system to fit our needs. This wasted a few days of working time and put us on a different track of how to build it. When given the opportunity to use the VEX parts we were able to build it, but with not a whole lot of spare time. Another instance was when we were testing the device to see how well it worked we did not take into effect how high the water pressure we could use to push the water wheel causing us. With the limited amount of time available we went ahead and considered it as an error in our design.

New project Requirements:

A project requirement that would help us build our projects would be to decide specific materials before building with an extra day to gather and seek out supplies. This would allow us to have more time to rethink plans or to change aspects of our original design. This would drastically have improved our design and the possible ability to make our models efficiency improve. Also communication on what parts that will be used, or are allowed to be used would be helpful to know so we can waste less time consulting with other teachers about parts, like the VEX gear, that we can or can not use.

                         New Challenges:

It would be very interesting to have less complicated tasks, but to use only materials that people would have access to at that time. Since most of the current tasks are complex and require modern tools to represent clearly as a model if we scaled the tasks down slightly using more old-world tools and supplies would be very neat.