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Forum: The Classroom
Topic: Cool science project?
started by: marc c

Posted by marc c on Sep. 01 2000,00:08

Ok, say during your senior high school year you are given the oppertunity to do whatever pleases you... as long as it involves (loosely) science or engineering. What would you do? So far I'm leaning towards building some type of kick-ass robots or something... what would you do?

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-marcc
< lmao.cjb.net - funny pictures >.

Posted by aventari on Sep. 01 2000,01:52

That sounds very cool, but you must not be overambitious in your project selection. i know that's always my downfall, and building a robot would definately not be an easy task.

you could build an electric motor. this is a project a friend on mine did in a future scientist&engineers of america class.

hmmm what about a series of mirrors and lenses that will focus the light from a lightbulb and create a laser like effect and burn something (like the sun+magnifying glass effect). is this possible??

How about building a thunderbird 950+GF2 ultra and overclocking it to 1.5 gigahertz with peltier+watercooling.
Your cooling system could be your project! heh heh i build an h2o cooler for my celery and it's pretty fun doing that shit.

what ever you do, good luck!! These projects were my FAVORITE thing to do in high school.

in AP physics back in HS we all made mousetrap powered cars, and I made mine 4 wheel drive. it blew everyone else away. just had to brag about that

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aventari
"this web page best viewed using a monitor.."

Posted by marc c on Sep. 01 2000,13:55

Actually I've done the focused light thing and the peltier cooler thing, as well as the mousetrap powered cars a couple years ago.

The electric motor thing sound like it might be fun, though. Right now I'm leaning towards building a remote controled submarine for the first quarter, as it's something I've always wanted to do.

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-marcc
< lmao.cjb.net - funny pictures >.

Posted by Wolfguard on Sep. 01 2000,14:42

build a combat robot and then go play with your RC friends

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Nuke em' till they glow and shoot em’ in the dark and let the computer sort em' out.
Then wait for a mutation…

Posted by kuru on Sep. 01 2000,15:51

my junior year in high school i built a cannon that fired street hockey balls on an air pressure system from a portable electric air station. that was fun. it involved engineering and weaponry....

i wonder if i still have that thing....

anyway, it was fun, and it involved some engineering type stuff.

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kuru
'if your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd kill you in your sleep.' -frank zappa

Posted by iso9k on Sep. 01 2000,19:03

Build a time machine - definitely a time machine

Posted by PersonGuy on Sep. 01 2000,23:44

Yah, and when you finnish it, go back in time to NOW, and show yourself how to build it quickly, so you can slack off with some free time.

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<P:\>erson\Guy.exe -PersonGuy *pERSONgUY.cfg
< http://www.go.to/personguy >

Posted by Happyfish on Sep. 02 2000,08:51

Haha, that's pretty funny..

Um..I'm just curious; what exacly is a mousetrap powered car? does it somehow use the energy of the mousetrap snapping shut??
(I hope I didn't miss something, resulting in me looking like a fool..)

Posted by marc c on Sep. 03 2000,01:00

yeah dude... mine was sweet, about 2 feet long made out of balsa. It beat out everyone else in my class, although it was nothing compared to < these > cars.

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-marcc
< lmao.cjb.net - funny pictures >.

Posted by smellfist on Sep. 03 2000,03:48

In senior drafting class in high school we had a project to build a device that would safely deliver an egg from a 40 foot drop.. Lot of fun seems that we could only use cardboard and tape..

Posted by nautilus on Sep. 11 2000,18:42

We did the egg drop in high school too. For us it was coat hangers, panty hose, and rubber bands. Mine kicked ass, and my egg didn't break, so I was quite pleased.

Posted by kuru on Sep. 11 2000,19:01

our 'egg drop' allowed us 1 manila folder (like a file folder), a foot of masking tape, 4 staples and 6 oz of glue.

i turned mine into a parachute, glued it to my egg, and let 'er rip. we did repeated drops starting at 40' for a D, 50 for a C etc. i made it up to A and was going for A+ when a gust of wind caught my egg as it was glidin off the roof of the school and splattered it on the gymnasium wall.

to quote incubus: damnz0rz.

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kuru
'if your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd kill you in your sleep.' -frank zappa

Posted by iso9k on Sep. 11 2000,21:42

Build the time machine out of eggs and mousetraps. oh, and a lava lamp. Time machines need lava lamps.

Posted by BLacK-JEsuS on Sep. 12 2000,00:27

There's this old guy that lives a few houses over with a lab in his back yard, he always comes out all crazy, like he's all hopped up on goofball! (see JeffK) The cops came and took mister knickers away, but the memories of long hugs and walks in the park live on.

[This message has been edited by BLacK-JEsuS (edited September 11, 2000).]

Posted by kuru on Sep. 12 2000,01:37

don't forget that a time machine can't have regular headlights. those time circuits are trippy, you'll need blacklights to see properly.....

and um, it has to be involve a d'lorean (sp) and some plutoinium. because um, it just does ok. either that or a phone booth and george carlin.

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kuru
'if your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd kill you in your sleep.' -frank zappa

Posted by whiskey@throttle on Sep. 12 2000,01:44

I did the whole egg drop thing, 'cept we had to launch ours up in a cradle, affixed to a model rocket. With the egg, I was successful...

So I upgraded to hamster.

As for the project, Marc, I have but one word: Battlebots. Kill 2 birds with one stone.

Posted by aventari on Sep. 13 2000,00:41

let us not forget the flux capacitor! you should never leave your temporal continuum without one!

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aventari
"this web page best viewed using a monitor.."

Posted by Ozymandias on Sep. 13 2000,01:05

1.21 GIGAWATTS!!!

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But where is < Gamera >?

Posted by aventari on Sep. 13 2000,02:34

the only thing that sux0rs is how Dr. Brown pronounces is "Jiga-Watts".
Jigga-what? jigga-who?

I guess he was just gettin' jiggy wit it before everyone else! Preemptive jigga-strike

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aventari
"A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire

Posted by Lordbrandon on Sep. 18 2000,15:20

Ultimate science project= build a rail gun

Posted by Kayy on Sep. 18 2000,19:09

Yup, that would be the ultimate project.. build a rail gun..

Damn.. I wonder how much it'd cost to make one of those things.

But yeah, either the railgun, or perhaps a home made lightning gun. (powered of course by a tesla coil and some big batteries )

Posted by Blain on Sep. 19 2000,00:17

Damn! I’m jealous, the most mind expanding activity we got to do in my AP physics class was listen to my incompetent teacher try to figure out whether gravity was stronger on top of a hill or at the bottom of it. Seriously.

I also managed to graduate with a 4.0 (1 of 8 in a class of 45) without doing a single homework assignment my sophomore, junior, OR senior year. And I’m NOT VERY SMART.

I got shafted…

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"But every time I learn something new, it pushes out something old! Remember that time I took a home
wine-making course and forgot how to drive?"
-Homer Simpson

Posted by kuru on Sep. 19 2000,03:43

my high school physics class (hs didn't have AP, we were too poor) consisted of mainly blowing things up, building things, demolishing things.

typical day of class was like this: walk into the room sometime around start of class, pick a desk or table, sit on it. lloyd (the teacher) would say something like 'ok guys, today you are going to build me a projectile motion machine that can hit this target *holds up paper plate* from 30 feet away, using nothing but the materials in my store-room. go to it.' 45 min later we'd show him a sheet of paper with a design on it and demo our machine. hit the plate, A. miss the plate, F.

the best one though was 'i want you to mail me a pringle potato chip. it must be edible when it arrives, be in pristine condition, and use minimal packaging. points will be subtracted by volume and weight, starting with 100 points for a pristine edible chip arrival. good luck.'

i encased my chip in plastic-wrap, stuck it in a little box, taped the box shut, filled it up with insulation-in-a-can, cracked the box off, cut down the size of the insulation to be just barely bigger than the chip, put a sticker with the address and a stamp on it, and mailed the sucker. managed to get an A.....and kudos for using a bbq pringle.

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kuru
'if your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd kill you in your sleep.' -frank zappa

Posted by marc c on Sep. 20 2000,01:01

Actually, someone did the electromagnetic gun thing last year. (Only shot about 12 feet, btw) Right now I think I'm doing a remote controled submarine, complete with wireless camera.

That should take a couple of months at least; after that I'm not sure what I'll do. I still have an urge to enter Battlebots; perhaps I can get my school to pay for it.

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-marcc
< lmao.cjb.net - funny pictures >.

Posted by pengu1nn on Sep. 20 2000,13:02

in my hs physics class, my teacher was crazy!

he got 25 of the console tv's and we threw them off the top of the bleachers to calculate the affect that gravity and wind ristance had on different objects with different weights and all that good stuff. it was cool when the tv's imploded!

Posted by cyph0r on Sep. 25 2000,22:46

Me and my friend, Jose, just finished building a robot for H.S. check it out at < http://dmhsrobotics.homestead.com/2k.html >

Posted by damien_s_lucifer on Sep. 26 2000,04:24

THAT'S NOT A ROBOT!!!!

dammit, it's just a big RC robot-looking thing.

A *real* robot has to be programmable so it can do shit without human assistance...

Posted by cyph0r on Sep. 27 2000,01:17

it can be programmed to do shit by itself (walk and turn in the hallways, say hi when people pass by, and all that shit), but we haven't done that good of a job with it, so we just keep it on RC for now.

Posted by Wolfguard on Sep. 27 2000,12:07

To quote Coolrobots.com

"my robots can beat up your robots"

It is rc but thanks to the wonderful guys here at work it does have a plug in brain that lets it navigate and walk sentry-go.

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Nuke em' till they glow and shoot em’ in the dark and let the computer sort em' out.
Then wait for a mutation…

Posted by Wolfguard on Sep. 27 2000,12:14

oh, and the term Robot comes from a russian word meaning slave.

by def. a RC car is a Robot.

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Nuke em' till they glow and shoot em’ in the dark and let the computer sort em' out.
Then wait for a mutation…

Posted by askheaves on Sep. 27 2000,19:48

quote:
Originally posted by Wolfguard:
To quote Coolrobots.com
"my robots can beat up your robots"
It is rc but thanks to the wonderful guys here at work it does have a plug in brain that lets it navigate and walk sentry-go.

I see the primary purpose of this robot is to guard the beer in the Igloo cooler.

Cool...

This message has been edited by askheaves on September 27, 2000 at 02:49 PM

Posted by RenegadeSnark on Sep. 27 2000,22:21

quote:
Originally posted by smellfist:
In senior drafting class in high school we had a project to build a device that would safely deliver an egg from a 40 foot drop.. Lot of fun seems that we could only use cardboard and tape..

we did that... with toothpicks and elmer's school glue. we only got to build one.

mine was the first one to survive, and only 3 others out of 50 made it.

i own.

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Webbie/EIC
< http://boomgames.com >

Founder < http://tucb.com/ >

Posted by Wolfguard on Sep. 28 2000,11:10

quote:
Originally posted by askheaves:
I see the primary purpose of this robot is to guard the beer in the Igloo cooler.
Cool...

can you think of a better purpose in life?

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Nuke em' till they glow and shoot em’ in the dark and let the computer sort em' out.
Then wait for a mutation…

Posted by askheaves on Sep. 28 2000,15:36

quote:
Originally posted by Wolfguard:
can you think of a better purpose in life?

Nope!
Warning! Unanounced intruder: initiating DNA scan. Welcome, Wolfguard. Have an Old Milwaukee. It does not get any better than this.

Truer words were never spoken.

Posted by Wolfguard on Oct. 02 2000,14:16

quote:
Originally posted by askheaves:
Nope!
Warning! Unanounced intruder: initiating DNA scan. Welcome, Wolfguard. Have an Old Milwaukee. It does not get any better than this.
Truer words were never spoken.

Old Mi...
Ugh, we said Beer not piss water!

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Nuke em' till they glow and shoot em’ in the dark and let the computer sort em' out.
Then wait for a mutation…