This is my video. But before you watch, TURN OFF THE VOLUME! It is just some people yelling, and there is no point to it.
The reason I chose this over the other one I showed in class today is because this one is more of a duel, and no one that I know of has seen this yet. This is what was said by the uploader.
“I love this class so much!
We were divided into teams in order to take on two big projects; A robot that does a task of our choice, and a robot meant for this sumo competition. I didn’t get video of our first project, a maze-solver, however I find this project to be much more exciting.
The rules of the game were as follows: The bot had to be no bigger than 10×10 inches, and weigh no more than 2.25 pounds. The robots were to start back-to-back, and move forward as their first move. They also, of course, had to stay in the ring.
Overall, we came in second. By the way, our robot is called ‘the Harvester of DOOM!’”
This is cool because it is like a sumo tournament. The robots are trying to knock the other off the stage, and it is funny how that turns out.
To my true and loyal friend,
To answer your question, we are in this war and there is no turning back from it now. The war has gone on for too long to remake decisions, and this is certainly a decision we cannot go back on. However, the war directly involves us. Did the King not cause the Parliament to pass laws that would cause our lives to be miserable? Did they even care how many innocent citizens were killed or ruined in their madness to get money, or to cause us to step back into line? They thought about none of these things when they did what they did. They must pay for what they have done for us, and they will have paid the price when they are toppled, defeated, and we will have our freedom from tyranny for once and for all.
Sincerely, John Robbins
There are a lot of suspects in my story. See, Salim went up in a ferris wheel with at least 20 people in it, but he did not come down after the 30 minutes of the ride. So this makes everyone in the car a suspect. There is one other mysterious character, and he was the man who gave Salim the ticket. Everyone in the car is also a witness to the crime, unless there was a time when no one was looking and Salim disappeared. Ted an Kat also saw Salim get on, but not off. There may have been other witnesses, because there was a line waiting to get onto the ferris wheel, but I do not think any of them will have information. Ted and Kat have found a few clues, but they have to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Ted does that with his robot-like brain. They have 9 theories on what happened to Salim, but none of them made sense, though all of them were based on leads. Then there are a few red herrings. The ones they have encountered were the theories that they crossed off, like Ted’s theory that Salim spontaneously combusted. Overall, this mystery is living up to its title as a mystery, because it sure is mysterious.
Our class environmental goal is to help protect and preserve the Sudbury Assabett Concord (SuAsCo) watershed and the surrounding wildlife. This includes the 5 main groups (invasive species, watershed appreciation, vernal pool/Warner’s pond, river appreciation, and erosion) and other, smaller, topics like picking up litter and doing projects with the native animals. Our research was very important in the beginning, when we did not really know what types of plants were invasives, or they were native, so we did a lot of research on the invasives to find out more about them. Then, we also did a lot of research in the form of experiments, where we did things like pouring vinegar on garlic mustard. Discussion has been an essential part in this project because we used it in a talk with Dr. Windmiller (a local wildlife biologist) and when chattering about what we are going to do later among ourselves.
Just for you to know and consider, our group had no official leader. We had an equal government style thing, and everyone picked a few areas to work on, except no one really stuck to that. I am being a contributing member of our group by…
I might have (and probably have) done other work, but I am rushing through this at the moment, and I really cannot afford to think of anything else on the topic.
The most memorable time that I can think of was when I labeled each leaf of a garlic mustard plant (with the much-appreciated assistance of Mrs. D) and this particular time comes to mind right now because it was probably the most boring, tedious work that we did the entire session. My understanding of invasive species and the threat they pose to natives increased greatly during this project. I learned that garlic mustard can be identified by crushing and crumbling up a living leaf (it smells like garlic) and also that the purple loosestrife has up to 1,000,000 seeds each year, and that the Norway maple has a smooth bark, and if you break off one of the leaves, then it lets out a white sap. I also have learned a little about the other topics from this experience, though definitely not as much as I know about invasives.
The 3 major accomplishments of our project are these (not really in any particular order, by the way).
Our project will make a difference because it is pretty much about raising awareness, and they say 4 hands are better than 2, so we could say 1,000,000,000 hands are much better than 50. If our project is successful (and I think it is on a track to be) then we will be able to have that kind of help in protecting local areas, and places that are in trouble like ours, too. Little do people realize how much they depend on their nearby watersheds, and what the impacts would be on their lives if there was problems in the watershed. That is what we want, for people to know about these problems, and to want to help and then do so.
I made a difference in multiple ways. If I think about it, I lived up to my name and became a sort of Jack-of-all-trades, assisting others a lot, but not doing that many projects by myself. That was one of the big ways that I helped, though I also did some other things alone. I must say that my Scratch is coming along very nicely now (a special thanks to Nathan and Jack) and will be a pretty decent game when it is finished. My assistance also was appreciated in the experiments (I think and hope) when we worked with garlic mustard and Norway maples. Though I think I was pretty good in DPC, I will shamelessly say this – I would never have been able to do all I did without the help of my friends/colleagues.
We will keep what we have started going for many years at this school and hopefully in other places as well going by having other people finish the part we created, which is hopefully going to be like a tiny speck in what is going to happen in the future, (no insults intended) with other students. Say we cannot pull enough garlic mustard in one shot. Then others will do the rest for us, and we can sit back and relax and – okay, maybe not. Our project will hopefully be picked up by people in other places as well, so tat they can catch onto the issue, and then the whole the thing will snowball until it gets more common to have a clean watershed, because the watershed is so much more important than most people realize, though I think that most people who hear about these problems will want to try and stop these problems that have been bugging us, and now, there is a way to stop these issues, and we have found it.
For robotics, I was in a group with Ellery and Grace O. The whole class, split up into groups of 2 or 3, did experiments with wheels and axles. We used many different wheels, and we ran the robots on many different surfaces, including linoleum, carpet, tinfoil and wax paper. My hypothesis for floors was that the robot would go farthest on tiles, and I turned out to be right because out robot went 8 feet, using my awesome design of 5 wheels, 2 big ones connected to the motors, and 3 medium/fat ones, 1 in the very front, and 2 between the other pairs. But now I will divide this up into groups, categorized by type.
(key: =worst, *=OK, **=pretty good, ***=best)
Wheels: The wheels and axles were the main part of this experiment, so it makes sense that they should be first. The different kinds of wheels available were big wheels, medium/fat wheels, small wheels, and disturbingly small wheels. We did not use the disturbingly small ones.
So you can see why we used 3 medium/fat and 2 big – there is a very good match-up right there.
Surfaces: Though the wheels and axles were the main bit of this experiment, don’t think the surfaces don’t matter because they do. We used linoleum, carpet and tinfoil. There is a big difference between the three surfaces, you will see soon.
As the surface data shows, the robot goes best on linoleum. It was also the answer I said for my hypothesis, so I was right on that too.
All in all, these were very successful tests and they helped show us how the robot works. It will come in handy soon I bet because everything does sooner or later. ;)