This engineering project is to design, build, and refine a device that converts one form of energy into another form of energy while being designed with limited materials over a span of two weeks. I’m thinking of making a helicopter or quadcopter with Gavin and William who had the same idea as me. The design could be a CH-47 Chinook helicopter, a standard quadcopter drone, or a smaller but much more compact helicopter made out of a coke can + supports. (Examples below)

#1: Chinook

Pros

  • It’s really cool despite being made of cardboard
  • It looks structurally stable
  • Does not require knowledge about PCBs
  • Most materials required are probably available

Cons

  • Despite being stable it might not fly due to carrying too much weight
  • This is a 1-time flight, there is no proper way for us to reuse it without somehow making it crash
  • It looks quite hard to assemble the propellers and main body

#2: Quadcopter:

Pros

  • It’s probably the most stable out of all 3 of the designs I chose because it also has pole in the center to keep it anchored
  • Very simple design with four DC motors and a few popsicle sticks
  • I dig the minimalistic look (You can hide the wires too)

Cons

  • There is also no way to really turn it off once it starts going, we’ll have to attach a string to it like a balloon to pull it down
  • There’s no telling if it’s accidentally too strong and the pole in the middle just goes flying (obviously we can’t have it extend to the ceiling)

#3: Coke Copter:

Pros

  • It’s so simple to assemble and looks really funny (oh the pranks you could pull)
  • Overall very light for just one motor to handle

Cons

  • This one actually requires a PCB to control in the air, we don’t have any programming software so managing that will be annoying