ELA Component: Journals
10/08/2016: I chose this project because it interested me when my AP Physics teacher demonstrated the bed of nails on a smaller scale with a balloon during class. I am one of those people that learn by witnessing demonstrations. I chose this project because it helped me understand the concept of mass and how it’s applied to points of pressure. I also wanted to work on a project that would capture the interests of people. I think The Bed of Nails is a perfect candidate for this job. People would be afraid when they see thousands of sharp nails. Eventually, they will figure out that there's nothing to worry about because the physics involved in the project protects them from being punctured.
10/15/2016: I received my materials for my project. So far, I have 2 pieces of plywood, a bucket of nails with about 1300 nails, a ruler, and a marker. I will use the marker and the ruler to draw horizontal and vertical lines on one of the pieces of board. I will need to figure out how many lines I will draw in order to estimate how many nails are needed for the project.
10/16/2016: I measured the board and drew lines along the vertical and horizontal sides every centimeter. I estimate that I will need about 2700 nails for this project so we will need to order more nails. In the meantime, I will start drilling and working with the nails that I have at hand.
10/20/2016: The process of drilling is taking a lot of time. I drilled a quarter of the holes on the wooden board so far. I don’t have a lot of free time to work on my project because of schoolwork. I will need to be more efficient in order to complete my project on time to present it at the stem festival.
10/22/2016: I'm still working on drilling holes into the piece of wood. So far, I'm more than half way done. I've observed that the battery of the drill lasts around 2 hours so I need to strategically plan the charging times and when I will drill.
10/23/2016: I had a little accident with the drill today. While I was drilling a hole, the drill bit that I was using broke. I think that it happened because I was pushing down too hard on the board and not giving the drill bit enough time to eat through the wood. The box that I have the drill bits is stored in my locker at school, I will need to wait until tomorrow to keep drilling.
10/24/2016: Fortunately, there was an exact copy of the drill bit that I was using in the box. I will have to be more careful from now. I don't want to damage another drill bit and loose more time.
10/26/2016: Finally completed drilling all of the holes, I will go to the physics lab tomorrow and fit all of the nails in. I'm hoping that all of the holes are drilled correctly so that the final product can be near perfect.
10/27/2016: Today, I fitted about 2700 nails through the holes that I drilled. It turns out that about the first 15 vertical rows of holes I drilled were pretty straight but the rest seem kind of crooked. This is because at some point, I realized that I have to drill faster to complete the project on time. It doesn't really matter though, as long as the nails are decently straight, they will get the job done. I also used silicone to seal the back of the nails and attach the second piece of board behind it. Finally, I taped the sides of the board to make it look better. The only thing left to do now is to wait until the product is dried up and then get it ready to present at the STEM festival.
12/05/2016: It's been a couple of weeks since the STEM festival took place. It was a total success. I had people come up and sit down on the bed of nails as well as lay on it. People seemed to be amazed by the fact that they didn't get hurt. All of the hours of work that went into developing this project was worth it.