What is the purpose of your device/toy, how does it function, and who is your user? 

My partner and I decided to build a peacock-flying ornithopter as our toy. The energy displayed by this toy is elastic potential energy that transforms into kinetic energy. The ornithopter’s ability to fly results from the elastic band’s ability to gain potential energy when it is twisted by the rubber band because it is connected to a spinning propeller that is attached to the toy’s wings. Our user of this toy is mainly for around the age of 7-14 kids; as my partner and I carefully considered about the safety concerns and if it was easy or hard for them to function with.

What is the environmental impact of your product and is it durable and safe?

Since wood is renewable, the majority of our materials are also environmentally beneficial. Unlike other building materials (like steel, plastic, metal etc), wood doesn’t deplete the resources that nature offers.  Wood is a resource that can be continuously grown and collected because it essentially stands alone. But, because our toy is made of incredibly lightweight and delicate materials, our toy most likly to become less durable. Nonetheless, this then results our toy to be extremely safe because it doesn’t have any sharp ends that would harm its users, and also because of how light the ornithopter weighs.

What precedents inspired you? What did you take away from them & how did it inform your choices?

The various flying toys that were created on YouTube gave me the inspiration. All of these toys gained elastic potential energy in order to be able to fly, which I thought was really interesting and wanted to try if it would work for my product.

How are you making your product original and/ or using creativity?

We kept the product original as we changed some of the materials they used. For example instead of cutting plastic bag for the wings, we used paper to keep our product more environmentally friendly. On the other hand, we made our toy look more creative by making our ornithopter into a peacock, which we believed may draw children’s attention to and interest them in our toy more.