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I think some challenges we encountered were working efficiently and being organized. I found it hard to get the things I was supposed to get done while one of my teammates was trying to do something different at the same time on the same part of the ride. I also found it hard to get my teammates to understand my ideas clearly but eventually I did.

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Anders: Here is a photo of our final project!

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Petra: Our carnival ride was inspired by the Dumbo and the Symphony Swing rides from Disneyland.

Lucy: We wanted to incorporate the spinning chairs from the Symphony swings with the up and down-aerial aspect of Dumbo.

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The materials we planed to use were:

1 ICE drink bottle

12 clear plastic cups

6 wooden chopsticks

1 solar panel

1 motor

Paint

Plastic sea animals

Sand

6 Coffee stirrers

However, after plans changed, we ended up using the following materials:

6 wooden chopsticks

9 square inches of tinfoil

1 solar panel

1 battery pack

1 motor

1 alligator clip

146 normal pom pom's

17 spiky pom pom's

91 Coffee stirrers

1 foot of pre-slit pipe insulation

1 rubber band

2 popsicle sticks

1 square foot of cardboard

2 feet of 0.5mm wire

1 foot of 1mm wire

1 foot of insulated 0.5mm wire

1 cd

6 plastic rulers

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Anders: the materials we used were:

6 wooden chopsticks

9 square inches of tinfoil

1 solar panel

1 battery pack

1 motor

1 alligator clip

146 normal pom pom's

17 spiky pom pom's

91 Coffee stirrers

1 foot of pre-slit pipe insulation

1 rubber band

2 popsicle sticks

1 square foot of cardboard

2 feet of 0.5mm wire

1 foot of 1mm wire

1 foot of insulated 0.5mm wire

1 cd

6 plastic rulers

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Lucy: Here is a photo of our original sketch:

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We do not have a video (sadly) because we had quite a few absences for extenuating circumstances (COVID, etc.).

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Lucy: I’m Lucy and I was the Lab Director and Scribe. For my job I helped keep the group on track and took notes on anything said.

Anders: I’m Anders and I was Materials Manager. To do my job, I brainstormed what materials we would need and collected them.

Petra: And I’m Petra, the Visual Recorder. My job was to make sketches of our ideas and visually represent our notes.

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How did you develop empathy for this project?

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How did you develop empathy for this project?

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We developed empathy for this project simply by talking to people. We interviewed siblings and family members to find out what people enjoyed, and what they were interested in. We used this as important data as to what we would create.

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Reflect on the engineering design process that you used to complete this project...

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Reflect on the engineering design process that you used to complete this project...

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First, we identified what the challenge was; create a solar powered amusement park ride model. Then we brainstormed ideas. We though about what types of rides we liked, and even interviewed others on their favorite rides. We then selected our first idea; a dumbo-style rotating swing that would go under water at a jaunty angle. So we tried to build it. We failed. When we tested, the little pods for the riders were too heavy, so we iterated. We built smaller lighter chariots and scrapped the water idea. It worked really well for a while, but eventually disaster struck. The motor prong broke off on one side! This was a very large problem, though luckily we were able to find a replacement one. But disaster struck AGAIN. The prong on our new motor broke as well! We weren't sure what could be done but eventually we solved it, by sticking a piece of conductive wire into the hole in the motor so it acted as the prong. Now, after lots of mishaps, it works!

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What challenges did you encounter as a collaborative team?

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What challenges did you encounter as a collaborative team?

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One problem we had, was that people were often absent. This made it hard to communicate and work collaboratively. Another problem we had was that we all had vastly different opinions on many aspects of the ride. We solved this by making compromises and dividing off the work.

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One challenge we had was collaborating efficiently. For example, if one person wanted to do the wiring, but someone else wanted to decorate at the same time, we had to work together to communicate on who could go first. We also had a few problems making decisions. Sometimes, one person would want to decorate a certain way, but another person didn't. We  solved these problems by compromising.

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As a collaborative team member, I encountered the challenge of organization, for example, if I wanted to change the circuitry of the ride, I'd have to figure out where Petra and Lucy were, if they wanted the changes, and what individual details they wanted so that we could strategize what was better to do first. It was also hard to have more than one person working on the ride at once, meaning we had to try and maximize the amount of things that could be done without needing the actual structure of the ride.

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What challenges did you encounter as a collaborative team member?

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What challenges did you encounter as a collaborative team member?

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Originally our ride was based off the Dumbo-style (Disney) round-about ride. What we wanted to adapt it to, was to add a water component. We created plastic pods to be carriages but they were too heavy for our ride. We then decided it would be better to not use water, so we made little seats instead of the pods. Later the third graders evaluated our ride. They noted that we could do with more decoration. So we did that exactly. We added a small ride platform, ball pit, and ticket stand.

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Petra: We got a 5/5 from them because it was super safe (since the pom pom's didn't fall out) and it looked nice. The majority of the third graders said our ride was "too good for feedback". But a few of them said we should hide the wires and add a little color. So we did. From this feed back we learned that not only does the ride have to work well, it has to look inviting and fun.(especially for third graders.)

Lucy: We got 5/5 for every category: safety, creativity, and excitement level/scariness. Some of our best reviews were "this is the best ride out of ALL of them!" and "this is too good for feedback". A few suggestions we got were to "hide the wires" and generally just decorate to make it more festive. We did those things, and we definitely agree with the 3rd graders, they greatly improved our ride!

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Well, the world faces many challenges. But related to this, specifically climate change and greenhouse gases. Nowadays, electricity is widely available, and very much used. In fact, the entire population uses approximately 580 million terajoules. That's 580 million trillion joules! In 2020, nearly 88% percent of the energy used was non-renewable. That means it was from sources like petroleum, coal, nuclear power, and natural gas. These are all non-renewable sources, which means that they will either eventually run out or not be replenished for millions of years. For example, petroleum, to convert oils to electricity you have to burn them. When these oils are burned, they release Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Though small amounts of greenhouse gases occur naturally in the atmosphere, these processes are adding more much too quickly.

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What did you learn from the feedback on your carnival ride, and the multiple iterations? 

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What did you learn from the feedback on your carnival ride, and the multiple iterations? 

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Why are solar powered rides important for amusement parks to consider?

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Why are solar powered rides important for amusement parks to consider?

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While amusement parks are fun, they often have huge negative affects on the environment. Each year they use over 1 billion kilowatts of electricity! If they were only able to harness electricity from natural sources like the sun, they could not only help the environment, but also have to pay less for electricity! Switching to completely renewable energy or at least partial renewable energy is a great compromise, keeping the excitement and fun while also keeping the environment safe.

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The only solution to the problem of the broken motor was to look around the science room and workshop for a replacement of some sort. Eventually we found a random motor laying on the counter in the science room, it was clearly not attached or associated to any of the rides, so we just took it. No one raised an objection and the motor worked well. Our new motor did break later, however we were able to fit a wire into it and it now works.

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What challenges did you encounter during construction (building)? 

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What challenges did you encounter during construction (building)? 

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Whilst building our ride, we came across many challenges. One of the biggest challenges we were confronted with was that our motor broke. Each motor has 2 metal prongs which are used to circuit power through it. On our motor, one of the metal prongs broke off. The solution to this problem would be to put a wire inside the motor to act in the place of the prong, however, though we tried many different things, the wire wouldn't stay in the motor, and, to make it worse, the wire pushed back the small piece of metal that allowed the wire to connect to the motor. The end result of this was: the motor was completely broken.

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The materials we planed to use were:

1 ICE drink bottle

12 clear plastic cups

6 wooden chopsticks

1 solar panel

1 motor

Paint

Plastic sea animals

Sand

6 Coffee stirrers

However, after plans changed, we ended up using the following materials:

6 wooden chopsticks

9 square inches of tinfoil

1 solar panel

1 battery pack

1 motor

1 alligator clip

146 normal pom pom's

17 spiky pom pom's

91 Coffee stirrers

1 foot of pre-slit pipe insulation

1 rubber band

2 popsicle sticks

1 square foot of cardboard

2 feet of 0.5mm wire

1 foot of 1mm wire

1 foot of insulated 0.5mm wire

1 cd

6 plastic rulers

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The challenge is to repurpose our solar panel and motor from the Solar Powered Car unit to create a fun model amusement park ride.