Elena Blogs for a Change

Sadly, my partner and I did not meet the deadline for the simulation, and I fear that we might not get a very good grade for it. But, although it sounds strange, I think I learned more from our rollercoaster failure than we would have learned from a perfect project. Here's my theory-- *We learn more from failure than from from success. As an athlete, I have experienced this before. When you lose a soccer match, you are more likely to analyze your performance than when you win. *Also, I feel like the relevant principles of physics are now solidly ingrained in my brain because we struggled so hard to make our roller coaster work. *Finally, I think the key concept we failed to grasp was time management- you need to assume things will go wrong and plan for it. We experienced a lot of technical difficulties, including glitchy software and outdated computers, but we should have made up for that by asking Mr. Aringo if we could come in during lunch...

As I read the requirements list on my roller coaster project, I noticed that we were instructed to add in supports to our structure. I remembered Mr Aringo teaching us how to insert them a couple days back, so I took in that information. First, I chose which supports to add in (there were many options, such as box support, arc support, or single-sided support). After this, I got straight to work. I added in a couple structure frames (supports), in places that would need them most. I haven't yet finished inserting them, but I hope to do that tomorrow. Personally, I kinda wish I'd gone faster putting them in, because now I have more work on top of all of my roller coaster modifications, but hopefully that is a skill I can improve upon- working with more speed.  S E C U R I N G  S T R U C T U R E W I T H S U P P O R T S

Right now, I'm currently still working on my simulation. I think everything is going well, considering we just started. There are somethings about the ride that need to be changed, though. For example, our g's keep passing the limit, which is not acceptable, and there is one point in the ride where the cart completely slows down unintentionally. These are some things that need to be tweaked, but I'm pretty confident we'll meet the deadline.  

Today was the first day of our 3D simulation roller coaster. I thought it was super fun, and I think I like it much better that the physical roller coaster project. Mr. Aringo wasn't there today, but he told us what to do the previous day so that we would be prepared. My partner and I made a simulation draft that worked okay. We're going to hopefully redesign it and tweak some parts of it tomorrow, to make our ride even better!

Ok, so I think we finally finished our physical roller coaster project. I didn't get the chance to blog yesterday, so I'm going to write about Monday's class in this blog. Yesterday we did our roller coaster presentations. Our ride finally worked, and we named it "The Suicide", because almost everyone who rode it died!! Anyway, our presentations was not that great overall. Some of my teammates were really shy, and when it was their turn to speak, they backed out. But I don't think it was their fault. We just didn't have much time to practice our presentation. I think if we'd had more time to plan and talk it out, the outcome would have been better.