Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Meeting Recaps

Thirteenth Meeting (April 20, 2007)

Ms. Nickerson and I ran clubs alone, since Peter and Vivek were off getting tuxedos fitted.

We made speakers out of wire and magnets, using a borrowed iPod as a sound source, and some other people tried to make electric motors. And some of us just had fun standing donut magnets up on edge on the table and rolling others around, making the stood-up ones spin nicely.

In our last meeting, one club member had conceived of an entirely new class of rocket: the Nocka Rocket, a.k.a. a hollow tinfoil tube with a pinched-off nose and a rocket jammed inside. This meeting, we actually went through with it. First we used a C-engine, and launched it out of the PVC launch tube. I didn’t even see the launch, ‘cause I was running through the play structure to get to Nocka and help him with the feisty igniter when he got it to work. But I saw it in mid-air! It spun some, dove, “pop”ed and smoked.

Then we went back inside and did another one, only with a D engine instead. This one I did see. I launched it (again from the PVC tube), it spun, it dove, it exploded with a nice burst of flame. The end, time for lunch.

Fourteenth Meeting (April 27, 2007)

Finally, we build bridges! Or try, anyway. In truth, after we split up into two groups, we never got far beyond the planning phase. We intended to continue in the next meeting, but we ended up having to take a break because of club member absences and such.

Fifteenth Meeting (May 4, 2007)

Hey, May the Fourth be with you!

We prepared three rockets. One was a long, thin, sleek black thing that Brendan found in The Closet. The second was a classic Nocka Rocket, only with a special plastic Charzard nose cone (which we lost). The third was a glider rocket that Brendan found and, with help, assembled. The first went off nicely, like so:


Video: BSEC 06-07: 15th Meeting: Rocket Launch

The second did what our made-from-scratch rockets normally do: launch, spin, nose-dive, explode. And the third we didn't have a chance to launch. That'll have to wait until another meeting.

Other than that? Umm, well, I do think I'm forgetting something, but I don't know what. Oh, we had Tootsie Pops, I think. But no, there was something else...

Sixteenth Meeting (May 11, 2007)

This Friday was a special schedule day, thanks to it being the Seniors' last day. (Congratulations to them, by the way!) As such, we had only about half the time we usually have--and half the attendance, too. We played briefly with LEGO MindStorms robots, mainly having them smash into each other so wee could see which one was stronger. It's fun to watch the wheels skitter about when they've been knocked off but remain wired to the control box.

Aside from that, we continued preparing our second glider rocket of the year.

Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Meeting Recaps

We're coming out of somewhat of a lull thanks to four missed meetings (due to lack of school) and a general lack of activity. But fear not for the future of the club! Next week we're doing bridge-building and more. In the mean time, a recap of what's been happening since the last blog update more than a month ago:

Tenth Meeting (March 9, 2007)

We begin our egg launch project with what amounted to a planning meeting.

Eleventh Meeting (March 16, 2007)

We successfully launched an egg and returned it unharmed! Woohoo! We'll have cameraphone video at some point if we can get it from Willy...

Twelfth Meeting (April 13, 2007)

This meeting was for all intents and purposes called off, although we did half-heartedly attempt to make a slingshot.

Ninth Meeting: 8 Flips, Looking to the Future

We had our ninth meeting last Friday. We learned a bit about electricity from Peter, shocked ourselves (literally), and launched two rockets. The first was a stunning success, a.k.a. didn't catch fire and survived the whole flight. It shot up and deployed two little gliders, which we never found. But the main body survived! We haven't done that in quite a while!

And the second one... well, let's let it speak for itself. :)


Video: BSEC 06-07 - Flip Clip

More video coming soon, if I can figure out how to free up some space on my computer. (Wanna guess how much I have? Try 895 MB. We started out with 148 GB. That's digital video for ya.)

Looking to the Future

We'll looking at meeting every week from now on, starting... when? Next Friday? Let us know whether you're free during A Block.

Oh, and we're also actually starting our egg launch contest and possibly bridge-building.

As always, we welcome (solicit, even!) your feedback and ideas.

Eigth Meeting: Uhhh, you call *that* a meeting?

Ms. Nickerson was out today, so we couldn't really do that much today. We tried to make a hydrogen fuel cell car (from a kit) but for some reason it didn't work. At least now we have a handy-dandy little hydrogen generator (and solar panel too, though we didn't use that today).

We had some fun with a little static-electricity thing at least.

Next meeting, two weeks from now, will be better, I hope--we're starting a new egg launch contest! Whichever group gets their egg the highest (by any means) and returns it to the ground unharmed, wins. We're not allowed on the roof, though...

We also want to make Pikashoes, like so:

- The Original
- The Variant

Oh, and Vivek skipped. ;)

Video coming soon, though there's not much to see.

Seventh Meeting: Music, Dry Ice, and Rockets

Today we had our seventh BSEC meeting of the year. At the start, Ms. Nickerson had set up some music-related booths for us, including a rather nifty lollipop thingy. Next we somehow acquired some dry ice--I'm still not sure how--and blew up another bottle. Kind of. It only blew up once Ms. Nickerson tried to defuse it, naturally. The next bottle was a total dud.

By that time we had pulled out the rocketry stuff and were plotting two launches. The first would finally make use of Vivek's X-Wing that had been sitting in the closet for 1 1/2 years; the second would make use of, umm, some cardboard and tape and all the rocket engines we could find. (That only means four, alas.)

The X-Wing performed beautifully, right up until, uh, the point at which it nose-dived into the ground. Parachute? Yeah, we had a parachute. Problem is, it deployed about a yard above the ground... and it had a hole. Or two. Not much of a help.

Of course, we'd have been crazy to bother with a parachute on our other project: a cardboard tube with two cardboard wings held together with a little masking tape. (Far more sophisticated than our "rocket javelin" from last time, you see.) The nose-cone, though, was decidedly less sophisticated. At first we had a weight in there, to make it less tail-heavy, but at the last moment ripped it out. (That had grave consequences later on.)

So on that launch the rocket went up like it was supposed to, but then twirled and twisted and dove straight at the crowd of observers. Several people dove to the ground; a couple actually tripped over each other. I'm amazed nobody got burnt. Luckily, the body tube soon detached and left the crowd alone, instead landing right next to the launch pad. A few seconds passed, and then the next stage activated. Only, our pitiful replacement for the weighted nose cone -- aka a bit of tape -- didn't hold. The remaining rockets shot out the front of the tube and streaked into the air... and then landed in the pool.

Interesting experience. Video embedded below:


Video: BSEC 06-07 - Seventh Meeting in Under 5 Minutes

Sixth Meeting: Rocket Javelin

Compared to our Fifth Meeting--when we made dry ice bombs, burned random things, fired the potato gun, smashed a PC monitor to bits, and launched a four-stage rocket car--this meeting was downright boring. But it was fun, especially towards the end. :D

We started out with the intent of making circuits and, ultimately, a Rube Goldberg-esque contraption that would launch a rocket. But we skipped most of that. :)

We wanted to launch a rocket out of the potato gun. There would be very little point, except that it would be, uh, kinda a 'rocket laucher' of sorts. To fit down the barrel we couldn't use a rocket with fins, so we made one from scratch. It was an extremely complicated design: a cardboard tube, a makeshift paper nose, and a D engine stuffed up the back and secured with masking tape. We put a few party poppers in, in the hope that they would, y'know, pop. Oh, and I snuck a little bonus surprise in there... more on that later.

We tried using the potato gun, but it was virtually impossible to attack the leads to the rocket. In the mean time we amused ourselves with some silly string, which ultimately ended up All. Over. The field. We had initially tried dropping the rocket down and then reaching through the hole in the chamber, but it was too cramped for such a delicate operation. Next we tried threading the wire through the barrel and holding the rocket in place, just poking out the end. We were going to attach it with some of the copious silly string lying around until I remembered that we had tape inside.

On that attempt, though, one of the leads had come disconnected. Awwww.

People were getting bored, so we just put the "rocket javelin" it on top of a chair and launched it. Oh boy was that interesting. After circling several times, bouncing off the ground, and coming to a rest facing the opposite direction from the way it had been launched, people decided it was safe to approach. Willy set off at a sprint.

Here's where my surprise comes in. You see, I had decided that it would be more interesting if there was a second engine inside. And I kinda forgot to tell anyone.

So at this point the rocket shot off again. The second engine was much smaller, so it just kinda skittered across the ground. But I sure am glad no one had picked it up.

Oh, and then it caught on fire.

See for yourself:


Video: BSEC 06-07 - Sixth Meeting in Five Minutes

Fifth Meeting: Dry Ice, Smashing a Monitor, Rocket Car and Feedback

Hiya y'all. Thanks for coming on Friday, if you did. It was fun. :) (Last meeting of 2006, too!) Vivek's going to try to get those videos online sometime in the near future.

We started off with some dry ice bombs. Our first one appeared to be a dud, which was a bit scary because you just know that the moment you give up and go to pick it up it'll blow up in your face. Fortunately, that didn't happen. :)

We had several more successful dry ice bombs after that. We also tried burning flour and making bottles of hairspray into flamethrowers and so on. But the real fun was just beginning. (If you've come a lot you'll notice that our meetings tend to start off slow and really pick up towards the end.)

Michael Firer had donated an old broken PC monitor for us to, uh, break even more. At first we tried using the potato gun, but we only got one glancing shot in and then the potato gun decided to, well, stop working. So naturally, we took the biggest, heaviest metal pole we could find, and just smashed it. A lot. Over and over and over again. We tried putting some dry ice bombs inside, but that didn't work so well.

Finally, we decided to re-try a rocket car, since the rocket dune-buggy went a total of, um, 5 feet? Brenden Hickey had recently participated in a 9th Grade Physics Class mousetrap car competition. Obviously, a rocket engine provides a bit more thrust than the spring of a mousetrap. So we strapped on four. You'll have to wait for the video to see just what happened, but suffice it to say it was spectacular. :)

Now for a few thanks:

- Mr. McKinney, for getting the dry ice for us
- Vivek for filming everything
- Michael Firer for donating his old PC monitor, poor thing
- Everyone who cleaned up the remains of said monitor
- Ms. Nickerson, Peter, and Vivek for doing extra cleanup
- Brendan Hickey for donating his car & David Arbeiter for spiffing it up with a few nice rocket engines
- And whoever took attendance at the LAST meeting, not this one (I know, the thanks are kind of late)

And now for some feedback. So far this year in the club we've done all sorts of things, but we haven't really put a lot of time into any single project. What does everyone think about that? We don't want to go too slowly, because then it gets boring. But we don't want to go too fast, because then we can never do any big projects. I feel like we might be rushing through things a bit too much at the moment.

So: is there any project people want to spend some more time on? If you don't want to answer this little mini-survey you don't have to, but we'd love to get people's input. We're open to ANYTHING. So: what do you want to do? Rank the following from first (you really want to do it) to last (you couldn't care less):

- Hovercraft (big project)
- Egg Launch Contest (big project - try to launch eggs in rockets and return them to the ground unharmed)
- Model Car Contest (compete for fastest, farthest distance, etc.)
- Glider/Model Plane/Flying Things Contest (longest flight time, fastest, highest, etc.)
- Building Circuits
- Rube Goldberg Machines Contest (you know--the ball rolls down the ramp and starts the dominos, the dominos trip a wire that releases a bowling ball, the bowling ball knocks over a vase that yanks a weight off a table, the weight falls on a button that launches a rocket - that sort of thing)
- More Coke & Mentos
- More Dry Ice
- More shooting the potato gun at stuff
- More rockets

Any other comments? Anything else you'd like to add to the list?

Fourth Meeting: Potato Gun and Target

Today we shot a target with the potato gun. A lot. At least, we tried a lot. :)

But first we tried launching little match rockets... and we kinda failed. That was pretty, uh, experimental... as in, I had never done it before and barely even knew how to do it. Well, it engaged a lot of people for much of the club block, so apparently there was something interesting about it. Or maybe it was just the matches.

(UPDATE: Willy tells me they gave up on the match rockets and just made a giant match instead. So it was just the matches. Guys, you should have soaked the paper towl in hairspray. It would've been a lot easier to catch on fire.)

Once Vivek returned with a camera we set up the target, leaving a few people behind still playing with the matches. Craig, marksman extraordinaire (he alone hit the improvised target of 'a bag' in our first meeting) took the first shot... and it was a good one. The wood immediately cracked, and the bracing boards on the back popped right off. (One of those boards would soon become the match group's giant match.)

Our next few shots weren't so successful. For the first time, we had two potato guns operating simultaneously. We never got to shoot them at the same time - Ms. Nickerson wouldn't let us (no clue why) - but it made things go much more quickly. We soon branched out from our normal potato ammunition and threw some yogurt and pudding into the mix. Our first few shots missed, but we got some good ones in there. Craig also made a triumphant return, this time punching a hole straight through the target.

Emily closed off with a very nice bulls-eye, splattering pudding all over. That was the last of our hits - we only had three - and the only one to really splatter stuff on the board. On most shots, we pretty much just splattered the makeshift "road" to the construction site.

We closed off by talking a bit about our plans for the future. We all agree that the next meeting should be dedicated to just blowing stuff up, plain and simple. But what comes after that? Building radios? Steam-powered boats? Rocket planes? Speak up! We need your feedback!

Third Meeting: Van de Graaff Generator & Rocket Dune Buggy

Last Friday, the 10th of November, we held our third meeting. We started off by playing around with a Van de Graaff generator, which went quite well. I've never seen so many people so eager to hurt themselves. It's a bit disconcerting, actually.

We started off with some, ahem, shocking high-fives. Then it progressed to fist pounds and even a slap or two accross the face. Several people formed a long chain to extend their collective reach.

Then, by special request, we learned a bit about nukes. Unfortunately, the person who requested it was absent that day, so it was totally pointless and I apologize for wasting your precious time.

Once we were done with that we strapped a rocket engine to Tyler's GI Joe dune buggy. Unfortunately, it was a lot heavier than I had anticipated, so we sent it... uh... flying a whole ten feet. :) Well, to look on the bright side, that's about 8 feet farther than I thought it would go.

Check out the videos:


Video: VanDeGraaf Shocks All


Video: Rocket Car

Second Meeting and Harvest Fest: Success! (ish)

Sorry this update is coming a little late. I've been super-busy. Anyway, without further ado:

Second Meeting

We had our second club meeting last Friday. Vivek started us off by leading us through the steps of making some silly putty as preparation for our Harvest Fest booth. Once everything was up and running smoothly, I (and a small breakaway contingent) began to quickly assemble a camera rocket and prepare it for launch. Yearbook Club had come around toward the beginning of club block to take club photos, but we thought we could do better with an aerial shot.

Unfortunately, we had trouble getting the film to advance and decided to launch the rocket from the Lower Field without enabling the camera. It was a fairly windy day, so we made sure to angle the launch rod away from the school (and into the wind). Countdown and liftoff went smoothly, but the wind had died down slightly - we had overcompensated for it. As the rocket deployed its parachute and ejected several pieces of flame-proof wadding (each a small speck in the sky), we lost track of exactly what was what. It came down somewhere in the vicinity of the graveyard, the next-door neighbor, or Hammond Street.

Twenty or so high schoolers soon flooded the neighbor's property and fanned out to look for our rocket. It must have been a strange sight for the puzzled folks staring out the first-floor window at us. Almost immediately Peter jumped up onto the rock wall the separated the neighbors from the graveyard, and before long a large portion of our group had jumped the wall.

Our search was in vain, however. Despite our considerable manpower we never did find the rocket. Perhaps it was just as well that we never managed to arm the camera.

Harvest Fest

On Saturday was Beaver's annual Harvest Fest. For the first time, the BSEC had a booth (or two) of its own.

Segway

The first things people were likely to notice upon entering the Green Gym were two i-series Segway HTs gliding around a test track. This proved to be quite a popular attraction; the waiting list was full from setup time to shutdown time. At one point the wait was around 45 minutes long, yet still people found the rides worthwhile. The 11th Grade (with whom we shared the Green Gym) accused us of stealing their customers, but in truth I think we only attracted more people to the area. Cross-promotion is a powerful thing!

Many expressed frustration with never having a chance to take a Segway ride, so we'll think about doing this again sometime.

Silly Putty

Hampered somewhat by a lack of club helpers (thank you Emily, David & Co. for keeping it running), the silly putty booth was nevertheless a very enjoyable diversion from long wait times. I was busy the whole time at the Segway and 11th Grade booths, so if anyone has any silly putty tales to tell, please do so in the comments.

Third Meeting Plans

Unfortunately we're not quite sure what we're doing at our next meeting. Our tentative plan is to build potato guns, but there are some liability concerns. (No, a simple waiver wouldn't solve those problems.) But don't worry - we have several backup plans. Whatever we do, it'll be cool. Stay tuned.

Second Meeting is Tomorrow

It's been a long three weeks, but the BSEC's second meeting is finally nearly upon us! Tomorrow in clubs we'll be putting our science/chemistry skills to good use and making silly putty, as well as (probably) shooting off a potato or rocket or something. Fun fun!

We'll also be planning two most important things:

1. Our Harvest Fest booth, which will feature Segway rides and silly-putty-making demonstrations,
2. and our third meeting, when we'll actually get to make our own potato guns!

We'll have a report on how it all went sometime in the next few days.

Vivek's Breaking News Report

Vivek: “ZOMG TOP STORY! It has been reported by friendly, as well as hostile news affiliates that there is a tremendous decline in the scientific arena.

“Scientific research reaches luxury as proper funding can no longer keep pace with inflation. Fewer Nobel Prizes are offered, and published scientific research went down from 61% to a measly 29%.

“Wait, this just in…

“Japanese researchers have just completed their first working prototype for the ultimate, indestructible, infallible, unassailable, impervious, metallic, rock-solid, ubercool, ultra dooper…robotic super doggie.

“Could things get any worse?

“Fortunately, we have Dr. Knowsitall here with a solution to this…catastrophe. Dr. Knowsitall?”

Dr. Knowsital: “mmmblmbblmblmbalmbmblmlmeblmlmlmlbm... the only solution is to join the nearest science club!”

Vivek: “That’s it folks….JOIN the NEAREST SCIENCE CLUB. Back to you Toph!”

BSEC Year 2: Twice the Membership, 10x the Fun (or so we hope...)

Today, club presidents announced the year's clubs and people signed up. Following a report on the state of scientific affairs in the United States by correspondent Vivek Pai, featuring an interview with acclaimed researcher Dr. Michael Firer, Ph. D., on his response to the latest developments in Japan. We'll try to get a full transcript online ASAP.

People were apparently so traumatized that they signed up in troves - we have twice as many members as last year. Hoorah! Glad to have you all aboard. :)

Last year one of our issues was that we had large gaps in between fun activities. This year, we're going to do something cool every single meeting. That's our pledge to you.

So start thinking about fun ideas, and we'll see you all at our first meeting. (That'll be either this Friday the 29th or the week after, October 6th, depending on how the A Block/B Block thing works out. I'll post that here and on the club board when we find out.)

Gearing up for Another Year

As I write them I'm also working on the club application form that I hope will allow BSEC to continue for a second year. I'll admit that we didn't get a whole lot done last year, but we have much more lined up this time. We'll call last year a training run. :)

In other news, here's a pretty nifty video some guy put on Google Video - 8,500 bottle rockets: