Final Early American Energy Entry

On November eight 2017, our Early American Energy project will be due. As our final blog entry, We have been assigned to think back to our project and reflect upon it. Some of the things I will be reflecting on are our Edison moments and how we could've done better. I will also be mentioning what we could do differently to improve our design and overall project.

One of our Edison moments was that my group's first prototype (bottom picture) didn't have a way of mechanically transferring the energy source. In our second design (top image) we fixed this problem by making the tiger spin a cup that winds a string. The string then pulls the cart and bring the log into the mill. A requirement that would have allowed my group to spend more time on this problem is if we had to make a blueprint that had to be signed off by the teacher. This way we wouldn't have made this mistake in the first place because it would've been pointed out to us from the beginning.

A challenge that should be added in the next two years to push students forward id to give them a list of specific materials. This way the students can represent the limited resources the people of early America had. Overall this project was interesting and creative. It was a good way of implementing Stem into our US history class.

Early American Energy Technical Drawings

Early American Energy Design Brief

Defining the Problem

Summarize the problem: The problem is that an early America people had three main energy sources to do their work, by animal, water, and air power. My group's task is to find an efficient way to transport a log into a mill. This problem affects the people because moving a log with your bare hands is nearly impossible and requires too much energy. 

Who was affected by this problem: Lumberjack were affected by this problem. Also, anyone who cut transported and distributed logs were affected by this problem.

Solution criteria: Our solution must be able to be able to represent a log being securely transported into a mill using animal power.

Constraints: Our energy source must come from animal power.

Early American Energy Blog #1

My group's task is to to move a log into a mill using animal power. In class we came up with some ideas and possible solutions. Our main idea is to have a small animal with a harness pull a small twig into a miniature mill. These items are obviously small for representation use only.