After the Break

This week has been mellow in terms of projects. After many congratulatories for our 2nd place win at the robotics competition, we found that we no longer had a purpose in the club. Josh decided that we should build water/soda bottle rocket launchers and water boats to race in the pond. As you can probably tell, my programming skills will be of little use for the rest of the semester. Therefore, my coding career has come to a stand still.

I was sent out to find a design for the water rockets that will keep possible cases of injuries to a minimum.  The water rockets will launch due to a build up of pressure within the bottle. When a certain level of pressure is reached, the water is forced out causing the bottle to shoot up. Josh wants a launcher that will automatically shoot off after a certain amount of pressure has been reached. This however leads to a shorter height and fly time. I, along with the rest of the club members, will most likely want to build a rocket where we control when the rocket shoots. We could then increase the pressure as high as we wanted as long as the bottle did not explode. This allows for much higher launch heights. Of course, it also increases the chance of pressure induced explosion harming a (or multiple) member of the club. As such, Josh wishes to not build this version. To keep students from being harmed, he himself would have to pump up the bottle. As it turns out, his fear of explosions is greater than his desire to see a water/soda bottle being projected 70+ feet in the air. He has however decided to consider alternatives if the club can manage to build the safer version without any incidents. My guess is that we wont ever get to see a bottle launched up 70+ feet in the air at Phoenix College.  Oh well.

For the past week I have been working on mazes and honors projects. I have been writing a paper that describes the derivation, importance,  and impact of Newton's universal law of gravity. I never knew it was possible to write a paper on math and physics. So far, I have 6 out of 10 pages single spaced. Wish me luck. Next week is all about mazes. I will keep you posted.