Final Product

My product is a jack-in-a-box, and the energy transformation of this toy is from potential energy into kinetic energy. When the lid is held closed, the spring inside the box is compressed which holds a great amount of elastic potential energy. When the lid is open, the spring extends and sprung out, which transfers the originally stored potential energy into kinetic energy, which would move the “Jack” in the box out to the top of the box. I believe my final product turns out to work pretty well, as it functions just like how it was originally planned to even though there were many problems throughout the process and it looks a bit sloppy. However, it still functions normally, and the energy transformation presented clearly and reasonable.

Areas successful & needs improvement

I think something that was very successful during this project was that I was able to work efficiently by following my plan, and also fix many problems and mistakes I may have while making my product. At first, I thought that making a jack-in-a-box was something that was pretty simple and easy to do, and I didn’t expect too much work throughout this process. However, as I have actually got into the procedures I realized that it was much harder and complicated that I first expected. I’m really proud that I have continued working with full effort even when there are problems that gets me confused and I need to re-think about. In addition, I think the fact that the final product still turned out working normally even though I have changed a lot of things regarding materials, designs, appearance, and more, it was very successful. I think something that I definitely need to improve on is to check to make sure all of the materials are available before starting the project, and also spending more time on many of the details and appearance of the product. Since we only have a few classes to complete this project, and I had to remake some of the parts due to my mistakes towards the dimensions and materials of the product that took away a lot of time, I wasn’t able to fix many of the details of the product and actually enhance it. Therefore, if we have a similar project again in the future, I would make sure I have planned everything out better and thought about some of the problems that I may encounter, and prepare for that so that similar problems and mistakes that appeared in this project would not continue to happen.

Impact on Environment & Target Audiences

For this product, my targeted audiences are mostly towards younger kids from elementary school all until middle school, but if I am aiming for a much broader audience, it can be for everyone who likes to play toys or wants to provide a great gift. I believe children around this age are more interested in playing with toys and they are also mature enough to handle this toy and make sure to keep themselves safe with it. A jack-in-a-box not only can be a fun toy that kids can play with instead of playing with electronics, it can also be a great gift to friends that provides a great surprise. When people are using a jack-in-a-box as a surprise for friends, they can simply put the gifts they want to give their friends inside the box. Once the spring pops out, they will not only be surprised by the popped out spring, but also the gifts that have been prepared inside, which I believe everyone would enjoy receiving as a fun gift. In addition, this product will not be harmful to the environment as wood is an environmentally friendly material that can be reused multiple times which means it does not cause waste to our earth, and reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. It is true that wood are produced by trees, and many people may question that why would it be environmental friendly if it is killing more trees. However, today, more wood is grown each year than the number that is used and harvested which means that it would not lead to less trees on the world. Also, waste is virtually eliminated when trees are used to make wood products. The barks, trims and sawdusts are mostly used as an energy source to help power wood production facilities, and it takes a lot less energy and fossil fuels to produce wood products compared to using other materials.