Group 20: Blog #1

Blog 1 Questions: 

A) Who is in your group and why did you guys decide to be a group together?

- Ethan Dumbrigue, Edward Tomlin, Justin Sims and Chris Cantrell. We decided to be in a group together because we have similar class schedules and for the most part, we have the same free periods. Also, we thought our work ethics were pretty good and we would perform well together. 

B) What is your initial plan to fulfill the objective of launching a ball a given distance?

Our initial plan is to have a marble travel down an inclined plane and fall into the first cup on the pulley(which has another cup attached on the other side). The second cup should rise up after the marble falls into the first cup(causing it to fall down and the other cup to rise) and knock the piece of wood keeping ball #2 in place on another inclined plane. Once the stabilizer for ball #2 is disrupted, ball #2 will travel down an inclined plane and fall into a tube, which will be wrapped around a piece of 2x4, which creates a screw. Once ball #2 travels down the screw, it will fall onto the mouse trap, which has a piece of string connected to it: one end attached to the mouse trap and the other attached to the bottom of an object holding a large amount of metal pellets(or bee-bees). Once ball #2 hits the mouse trap, the mouse trap will go off and pull the string, which will pull the bottom of the pellet container out from under the objects(pellets). Once the bottom is removed from the pellets, the pellets will fall into a cup that is connected to a pulley. The cup filled with pellets will fall and trigger the light-switch, causing the lightbulb to turn on. The second cup on the pulley will rise up and hit the golf ball that is placed on a ledge, right above the see-saw/launching mechanism. Once the golf ball is hit, the ball will fall onto the launching mechanism and roll to the desired launch distance setting. After this happens, the first cup(that got filled up with pellets) should empty itself out because after it hits the light switch, it will land at an angle, causing the pellets to spill out of the cup. As the pellets spill out of the cup, the cup will rise and the other cup(that knocked the golf ball onto the launcher) will lower down and hit the other end of the launching mechanism, which should launch our golfball. We will launch our golf ball at a given distance by having a see-saw-like object and it will have three removable walls, the first wall will only allow the ball to roll down it to where it will be launched 30cm. Then, if needed, we would remove the first wall and allow the ball to roll down the launcher to the second wall, which will allow the ball to be launched 50cm. Lastly, if needed, we would remove both the first and second walls, which will allow the ball to roll down to the third wall on the launcher, causing the ball to be launched 70cm.

C) What challenges do you anticipate facing?

Some challenges that we anticipate facing are having the second pulley cup system rising and then falling again fast enough in order to launch the golfball. Another challenge will be providing everything with enough space so that other objects don't trigger others before they were suppose to(so basically making everything work in the process that it is suppose to without any objects bumping into others). Lastly, having the ball land on the launcher might be a difficult task too.