Give an overview of your design process, sharing the product & your learning.

We were happy with the outside appearance of our prototype. This is called an ornithopter which is meant to show the energy conversion between elastic potential energy and kinetic energy. The wing gets the signal to flap when the user rotates the propeller to the connected rubber band, and when the user releases it, the energy transfers into kinetic energy resulting in a movement of the prototype. One scientific thing I learned about this prototype is that it was pretty cool how just using a small rubber band would help the whole toy to function and fly for so long, which made me wonder if almost all of my house toys needed energy conversion to function well. Furthermore, I also learned that being careful in all the small details is really important while doing these engineering projects. Where every measurement, material, size, tool, etc could affect any small parts of the product, which then would affect the big results and may lead to not reaching the expectations you want.

Use the rubric & your own success criteria to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the product.

Looking at the rubric to assess myself, I think overall we did a pretty good job. Our prototype does satisfy the success criteria but only two out of three. As written in the previous blog posts, our success criteria were…

-The ornithopter should be able to fly for at least 7 seconds 

-The ornithopter should be able to flap its wings successfully 

-The quality of the ornithopter should be able to hold up to 10 trials without breaking down

Our prototype was able to flap its wings successfully and was strong enough to hold up to 10 trials without breaking down. But one weakness of our product is that even though it was able to flap successfully, only one wing was able to do that, thus our prototype wasn’t able to actually fly into the air at all which. 

Explain how and why your toy/device meets the design specifications.

Our toy definitely meets the design specification because it shows clear energy conversion of elastic potential energy and kinetic energy. From the expectations we gave, the toy does have a pretty cool and creative appearance which we wanted it to have to draw the attention of the kids and many other users. Furthermore, our toy is also environmentally friendly as we decided to not use any plastic and instead used wood, sticks, and paper, which are materials that could be renewed and are biodegradable to the environment.

Other reflections: What are you most proud of? What was most challenging?

One thing I’m really grateful for and proud of is my partner and I’s teamwork and communication through building this hard and high technique/skilled toy. There were times when we wanted to give up on this project and start a new and easier one, but the patience and positive mindsets my partner and I had grabbed us from the “I give up” mindset and actually worked out pretty well. Even though the prototype couldn’t function well, I’m still really proud of the effort and strive my partner and I had put in to finish building this toy. The most challenging part of this unit was definitely building the toy. There were a lot of small parts of the building process that needed highly skilled techniques to make the mechanism work, so we need to do everything step by step and not mess up on any of the steps. One specific challenge I remember was drilling a small hole into the small wooden sticks, where these were to connect the wires to the propeller and so we had to make sure the hole wasn’t too small or too big. Due to the thin and tiny wooden stick, we needed to be extra careful when drilling, and when the hole was too big or small, we had to do the steps over and over again which was really challenging.

Reflect on your prototype. What were some strengths? What needs refinement?

Our prototype overall came out pretty to what we expected from our plan and blueprints. Some strengths I thought were that the toy was able to show the obvious energy conversion (elastic potential energy to kinetic energy) and at least one of the wings was able to move successfully. Another strength was that our toy was actually really built from the wood material we used, it was stronger enough to hold and so I’m guessing if the two wings worked out correctly, it may fly into the air successfully as well. However, some parts that would need refinement was the propeller and the wings. The reason we thought of why only one side was moving successfully was because of the connection between the propeller and the wings, this might be because of the detailed steps we didn’t consider or because of the different materials we had compared to the original video.

Outline the feedback you received from peers. Share some changes you will make as a result of this feedback.

Some feedback we received were:

Strength:

“I like how your design looks like a peacock. I think it is really colorful and attracts young people.”

“I think the design is really creative.”

“The envision is great and the idea is pretty solid.”

“I like how you guys used duct tape to wrap around the pointy end of the stick.”

Improvement:

“One thing you guys could improve is the appearance. Even though the toy looks really good, but the combination of the glue and strings that were used to connect the bent wire with the wood piece created a big lump, and so it might make it look not really aesthetically pleasing.” -Adding on to this feedback, one way I thought of improving was to firstly change the materials (but also needed to carefully consider if changing the materials would make an impact or not). Then because the glue created a big lump, next time we could try using super glue or adding less hot glue to make it look a bit more pleasing.

“I wonder if you could bend the paper clip again and so that it will be in the opposite direction to the existing one, then hook up the wings, and see if it would move.” -Adding on to this feedback, I think this could probably work. Bending the paper clip again may stop blocking the connection between the propeller and the wings and so that it could rotate successfully.

 

 

 

 

Explain how you used design practices to arrive at this iteration of your toy/device. 

Develop a detailed plan for creating the preferred design, including success criteria. 

The design I’m creating is an ornithopter. As I said in my previous blog post, the energy transformation this toy is showing is elastic potential energy to kinetic energy. The success criteria my partner and I came up with was that our ornithopter should be able to hold up to 10 trails without breaking down and that it is able to fly for at least 7 seconds flapping its wings successfully.

Some extra planning and info:

Materials list: 

• Thin paper (length: at least 30cm) 
• 3mm thick plywood board cut into: 

5 cm long wood sticks x 2 

10cm long wood stick x1 

13 cm long wood stick x1 

4cm long wood stick x2 

• 9mm small plastic pipe x2 (or use paper to make them)  
• Paper clip x5 
• Thin strings 
• Plastic straw x2 
• 1 cm small plastic pipe (could use paper as an alternative) 
• Beads x2 
• Sticks from cotton swab x2 
• Rubber bandx1 

Tools: 

• Superglue 
• Hot glue gun (alternative for superglue) 
• Wood driller 
• Ruler 
• Pliers 
• Scissors

Building Techniques 

• Drilling 
• Gluing 
• Binding 
• Laser-cutting 

The first picture is a drawing of the wings and the tail. The colors we choose were considered to be the colors of a peacock.

The second picture is a front view of our ornithopter. The total wingspan will be 30cm, with a length of 20cm.

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.