The task that was given to us was to build a vehicle to safely transport two passengers (rolls of pennies), with a total mass of 250 grams at a length of 5 meters. We were prohibited from using chemical or nuclear energy. Our car had to speedily and cost-effectively transport our passengers. To begin our project we started by using a light piece of wood as our chassis and we attached wooden skewers to be our axles, held up by our metal "axle holders". Our method of propulsion was a wound-up rubber band. We quickly realized that our method of attaching our rubber band, with a wedge, caused way too much friction. To fix this, we ditched our wedge idea and decided to drill a screw into our chassis for our rubber band to attach to. We then cut our metal pipe in half to have our rubber band going in between the two parts instead of next to the wheels, reducing friction greatly. This setup allowed for our rubber band-powered car to travel exactly 5 meters in just under 5 seconds.
Two things I believe I excelled in during this project are my collaboration and my communication. During this project, I helped divide up work among everybody to make sure we all did our part. I also did my best to communicate with everybody about how we should go about tackling our assignment. The area in which I believe that I can improve next time is encouraging my groupmates more to help with the building process.