Mentor Hours 3

Today I finished reading the two books my mentor gave me to read about the Snap Circuit kit. One of the books was the Student Guide and the other was the Experiment Handbook that contained the instructions for the 101 experiments possible with the kit. I found both of the books to be extremely informative and easy to understand. The kit is labeled for ages 8-108, and I fully enjoyed the fact that it's pretty much for anyone. The books were full of colorful pictures and diagrams and simple definitions of key terms which made everything much less intimidating. The authors also included both real life examples as well as examples from the Snap Circuit kit. Most of the information in the books I had learned last year in Mr. Trautman's physics class, but it was a nice easy review for me. The books made all the information much more interesting than a normal textbook does. I remember I honestly did not like the electricity section during physics class, but this review book helped change my opinion of it by making it a lot less intimidating and a lot easier to grasp the concepts. I think it was a nice way to re-introduce me into electronics and the basic science of electricity, batteries, resistors, switches, and receptors.

After school, I went back to mentor's workshop and began constructing one of the puzzle solving kits. I began with the balloon-powered hover craft and it actually took a lot longer than I expected. I spent a little over two hours constructing this:

It's simply just a piece of styrofoam with a hole in the middle of it, a tube with a balloon attached to one end inside the hole, and an index card wrapped and taped around the whole thing.

It was such a simple design, but it took so much longer to make than anticipated. In my head, the design was pretty simple. I just had to poke a hole, stick a tube in and attach the balloon. Cutting a specific hole into a piece of styrofoam was much harder than I thought it would be. With just a wooden pencil, a pair of scissors, and an Xacto knife at my disposal, I went to work to make my hole.

After the two hours that I spent just making the general design I had in my head, I spent another hour trying to modify it in order to get it to hover a little higher and a little longer with my mentor coaching me through it. He advised me to add the paper skirt in order to trap a volume of air underneath the whole thing in order to get it to float more. After that, it was a matter of observing how the hover craft moved and trying to find the individual imbalances and either trimming that point or adding weight to it.

Although, this particular project didn't specifically relate to robotics, I understand that my mentor knows that he can't just simply throw me into the field of robotics without first making sure I understand the basic electronic components and the basic physics and mechanics of how things move or work together to get a job done. This puzzle solving kit, really helped me review my physics and understand the mechanics of how different parts come together to create one structure. On my next visit I will attempt to put together the balloon-powered race car.

Hours Earned: 4 hours

Total Hours: 7 hours