Thursday, December 01, 2005

Potential Future Projects

There's so much fun to be had with ballistics, robotics, engineering and science in general. Way too much to fit it all in, especially considering we can only meet once every two weeks. But here are some potential long-term projects.

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Potato Gun: Build One

Build a new potato gun. More powerful, more adaptable, smaller, bigger, easier to use, whatever -- just better in general. We could stick with combustion or move to a pnuematics-based system.

Potato Gun: Stress Testing

Fire a potato at things and see how well they hold up. Brick wall? Wood wall? Pile of cans? Pile of trash cans? A dummy?

Oh, wouldn't it be fun to have a dummy...

;-)

Potato Rocket [& Launcher]

Stick a rocket engine in a potato and see what happens. Or adapt the potato gun to work as a sort of potato rocket launcher. :)

Rockets: Misc.

Experiment with building rockets in different ways. Two stage, multiple simultaneous engines, booster rockets - you name it. Maybe have a contest, "who can build the coolest rocket."

Rocket-Powered Merry-Go-Round

Stick a rocket on the side of a miniaturemerry-go-round and make a rocket-powered merry-go-round.

Rocket-Powered Other Stuff

Name something, and we'll make it rocket-powered. Frisbee, for instance.

Well, not anything... safety first, remember! :)

Bridge-Building Contest

Build a bridge. The one that can support the most weight wins!

(Bonus points for making it potato gun-proof.)

Remote Controlled Car/Boat/Plane

Bonus points for making it intelligent, and thus a robot. More bonus points for making it rocket-powered! :)

Soccer Robot

Make a soccer-playing robot... or, even better, a team of soccer-playing robots!

Robotics: Misc.

Make other cool robots. :)

Hovercraft

Bigger? Smaller? Faster? Maneuverable?

Rocket-powered???

Actual Physics

Calculate how far a potato or rocket goes, project trajectories, and so on. This would just be incorporated into our other projects.

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I will update this list as we come up with more ideas. Stay tuned!

Third Meeting - Preview

Tomorrow, December 2nd, we are having our fourth meeting. Unfortunately, it will be slightly shorter than usual because of a special schedule.

We will be starting an egg drop contest, which we will finish at our next meeting. Contestants must get an egg as high as possible while still having it return to the ground intact. There are four options available:

1. Send your egg up in a rocket. High risk, high yield, medium-high fun.
2. Launch your egg out of the potato gun. High risk, medium-high yield, high fun.
3. Toss your egg up in the air. Low risk, low yield, low fun.
4. Come up with something else!

We will supply:

- Rocket bodies
- Engines
- All other rocket launch equipment (pad etc.)
- Potato gun
- Plastic cups
- Everything left over from the Rube Goldberg machines contest
- And anything else you can find :)

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If you couldn't care less about eggs, a couple kids might also start experimenting with LEGO MindStorms. We will also talk about a couple of upcoming local competitions which we might want to enter.