New Year Count Down - Winter Break Camp
On Day Three of the New Year Count Down Winter Break Camp, we started with quite the conundrum! Both projects had been worked on for two previous days with two different groups of humans, and now on day three, we set out to try to finish them both and then make them communicate with one another!
But what were we building, anyway?! Oh, just a machine to count down to the New Year that also triggered a machine that launched a celebration into the air!
For the Celebration Machine team, this feat first meant taking stock of the parts that were already created, making some observations about the prototypes from the day before, and then asking a bunch of questions!
We learned we had three parts that were meant to combine into a catapult of sorts. We assessed the problems, asked some questions, and then got to work!
There was so much work! This team really came together and helped each other complete some mentally and physically complicated tasks.
The Count Down Team, on the other hand, began the day with a clock that rotated and counted down from 10 to 0, and not much else.
The next tricky step was to figure out how to use the counter mechanism as a means to launch something that triggered the Celebration Machine. The team settled on using a bowling ball. The only problem? Telling the counter-downer to release the bowling ball and then making the bowling ball travel the circumference of the structure and then drop into the Celebration Machine. A small task for an afternoon of building!
The team got to work...
The team also rested.
At the end of the day, we had a Count Down machine that triggered a bowling ball to release. The bowling ball (sort of) traveled (with the help of some adult hands!) down some tracks and around the structure -- it then dropped to the floor. There was a mismeasurement, and the track didn't QUITE connect to the Celebration Machine. Also, the Celebration Machine turned out to be a REALLY HEAVY catapult that balanced crooked on a REALLY SMALL base!
So, our count down triggered a manual celebration, and the Tinkerers screamed and threw ribbons into the air. IT WAS AWESOME!
