Team Members: Erika (Left), Sofia (Back Left), Jaden (Right) and Ava (Back Right)
As a team, we each created a Penny Boat in Tinkercad to test. We figured out what part of each boat worked and we changed our designs to be the best boat we could make. The boat design we decided on was the one with the round base. We found that it held more and was more efficient and buoyant than one with a flat base. To be more descriptive and explanatory we saw that most of the boats with a flat base were quicker to sink. The boats with the round or oval shaped base had more buoyancy and floatation.
Erika's Boat Design
Ava's Boat Design
Sofia's Boat Design
Jaden's Boat Design
Erika's Boat
Held: 207 pennies
Ava's Boat
Held: 59 pennies
Sofia's Boat
Held: 234 pennies
Jaden's Boat
Held: 20 pennies
In this video, you will see the final version of the penny boat. Sofia and Erika thinned out the walls of Sofia's original design to make it lighter and more room for pennies. The idea was to keep the shape of Sofia's boat but thin out the walls so it would hold more pennies. In the end, this boat held 240 pennies.
Please click to see the video of the boat holding all 240 pennies.
For the Final Invention Challenge, we came up with the idea to make...
The Story Stand- If you can flip it you can clip it!
The reason we thought this was useful is because...
When one of us is laying in bed wanting nothing more than to read a book, we find it hard to hold the book upright when we are tossing and turning and trying to get comfortable. We came up with the idea of a book stand. This would be useful because it makes it easier to hold your book while laying down comfortably. We talked it over and figured out that the stand would need to have a stable base, a holder and a handle. Additionally, a nice grip on the bottom of the handle could be added so you can hold it and place it without it sliding around. The addition of clips make it easy to maneuver from page to page as you are reading. This is where the brainstorming ended and the designing began!
Each team member was responsible for one peice of the final project:
Erika made the handle. She used the measurements from the stand that Jaden was working on to match the size of the handle. She rounded it off to be most comfortable to hold and added some rounded bumps on the bottom for grip.
Ava designed the clips. She modeled it after a clothespin since the size and function was the same. She was able to use the bent metal from a clothespin to connect the 2 pieces that were 3D printed.
Sofia created the base plates and holder. She designed the plate to attach directly to the stand with "L" shaped brackets on the bottom to rest the book onto.
Jaden was responsible for the actual stand. He had to print it in 2 pieces because the 3D printers are not large enough to print it as one piece.
Erika's Holder Design
Ava's Clip Design
Sofia's Holder Design
Jaden's Stand Design
Erika made the handle. Her first idea was to make it round and flat but that was not comfortable to hold so she changed it to be more like a bicycle handle.
Ava made the clips to hold the pages open. The process of designing this was based off of a clothespin. Once the size was good, she added the bent metal piece.
Sofia made the holder for the book. This was a flat plate with brackets on the bottom so a book would not slide down.
Jaden made the base of the stand. It was made a few times in order to figure out which directions the pieces should be to best support different size books.
1 base plate- lime green
2 clips to hold the pages- blue and white
6 L brackets to hold the bottom of the book- pink and gold
2 pieces of the stand including a built in handle- dark green and blue
We put all of the pieces together and added a book.
Our school Librarian, Mrs. G tested out The Story Stand in a way we never thought of! When we showed her our invention she was very excited about it. She even used it with a class so she could hold the book and show the students the pictures while she was reading!