Solar System Formation

Long time no see! Here's a video of my explanation about the Solar Nebula Theory and what gravity has to do with it!

Rest In Peace to Kitty and Hope

I am very sorry to say, that our brave volunteer, Kitty could not land on planet Mars safely. While landing, Kitty was sending us signals and messages, but we could not understand. But then the signal was cut off, so suddenly. The signal came back on, thirty minutes later and Kitty's last words were, "It's red up here, my favorite color. It's beautiful. I made it. But I'm sorry I couldn't help investigate...I have a crack on my head...it's leaking...I'm sorry." And the long beep came on again. It only took a few seconds until all of us, cried. Kitty will always be in our hearts.

Okay, guys. Seriously, now. Hope and Kitty, while landing, were attacked and shot by aliens and that is how they both got some major injuries. I'm sorry. I just had to do that.

Anyway, the reason as to why Hope could not land safely is not her fault. It is ours (my group and I). I think that while doing the process, we shaped up Hope wrong. Our parachute was too small to make the landing take long to get down and softly hit the surface. The parachute is the only error I think that we have made because, other groups made a cone-shaped lander and did not put too much cushioning on the sides of the cone but they were still very successful. A change I would definitely make if I could ever do this project again, is to keep the trash bag its normal size and to use string rather than pipe cleaners to attach the parachute to the main part of the lander. Because while I watched the successful landers, I saw that they had big parachutes and string to attach them to the lander. Even though our design was a fail, I have learned a lot through out this project. Check out the video below of the actual, real drop! 

Here Goes Hope!

Today's the day! What will happen to our brave volunteer, Kitty! Let us hope Hope can land safely into planet Mars! Check out the photos below of the before pictures! And stay tuned to the results!

Kitty fighting!

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Team X Status Report #2

Hello, again! This will be the last post before we do the real thing with our lander, who we officially name, Hope. For this post, I will be looking more into and explaining more about the science of our project. After all, this is for science class overall. 

Air resistance, which is important to Hope, is a 'drag'. "It is the force of friction with the air, that slows down motion." My teacher says.

The way air resistance importantly plays into our lander is that without it, our lander will not work well. Because, air resistance is what slows down the fall of our lander, which helps to lessen the impact of it when it hits the ground. Our parachute might not be the biggest parachute you can find on a lander but, it still needs to push against more air as it drops. Which means air resistance is greater and it will help our lander to drop more slowly. And that is how air resistance plays a part to our lander drop.  

To cushion the impact of Hope when she hits the ground, as a group we decided to shove half of the trash bag we had cut off from our parachute to the bottom of our cone. We make sure that the half of the trash bag is securely shoved in the bottom of the cone until it is tight and does not have a squishy feeling to it. Also, to slow down the speed of our impact, we built a parachute. That does its functions very well. It is a very small parachute compared to our classmates but, we believe that it works just as good as theirs. 

The things that have gone well and stayed until now while building Hope, is Hope's main body part, the cone. When we all first thought about making a cone-shaped lander, we were nervous. But surprise, surprise! Lots of our classmates made a similar cone-shaped lander, too! We think that making a cone-shaped lander was a success because of how secure and protective it is. I don't know if I could call this a success or not...but let's see! With our money budget, we had to be careful about the things we buy with it. So, we had to buy two strips of tape and we were successful in being wise and careful as to where we should stick it on. We spread it out evenly and in the places where we needed it to be. The last thing that has gone well is that we are very happy that we decided to cut the big trash bag evenly in half. One for the parachute and the other for cushioning the impact of Hope's fall. First of all, it helps us save our money and second of all, it helped our lander in two different ways!

And now to reverse the topic, what things have gone bad? No. What things that have gone bad but, have now been changed. Better. The first things that we have changed is the shape of our parachute. Instead of having an open parachute, we taped the sides of the trash bag to for a type of air balloon. When we closed it, we realized that it worked way better because having the sides taped, meant that their would be more air to be pushed against and to trap more air that way. When there is more air to be pushed against, the speed of the fall will decrease. We have also changed the length of our pipe cleaners which attach the parachute to the body of our lander. We have seen a significant change from that, too. Having the attachment longer helped our lander to slow down even more. We had a specific place of where exactly we wanted to put the "cushioning" inside of the cone. The "cushioning" consists of pipe cleaners. We changed the order a lot but, have now found the right place(s) for the pipe cleaners. In the process, we thought about making some type of stand, which did not work. Sadly. We already bought the materials and we didn't want to waste it. Thankfully, we came up with an idea to make a "cage" around the egg from the outside. We don't know if it will work, but we like to think of it as our egg's armor.

We will be testing these for real on Sunday, next week! I am really excited to watch the fellow landers and Hope! My hope for Hope is that she will successfully land on planet Mars safely. But that's just my hope. My predictions, though, is that the egg..will crack a bit? I don't know. After all those days, having Hope test falling with a golf ball instead of an egg, I always hear a painful, big thump when she lands. I am confident about Hope but, I am also a little bit nervous. Well, let's see next week! Will Hope make it safely and successfully on planet Mars? Or will she...find out next week!

Check out some of the lastest photos and also don't forget to watch our test drop below!

 That's me with the cat ears!

Drawing of Hope by our lovely Kira!

Team X Status Report #1

Before I start writing..I will tell you about what we are doing right now. In science class, we are now doing a project to make the most successful, safest, cheapest "spaceship" for our egg. Yes, we are using money, not real ones though. Each group has - had seventy million dollars, we have to try to use the lease amount of money but still have a successful outcome/ result. We are not yet ready for the real egg drop, all of us are still in the testing process of this project. So, here we go!

Design tests demonstrates our designs' performance or ability, so we can find out its flaws and quickly observe and learn how to fix them. We do them to simply test our designs, find its flaws or mistakes that we've made while making the design, learn from them, and then think about what we can do to improve our test design. I have that testing our designs (design tests) are one of the most important process for this project. We get to see our designs in action, its abilities to figure out whether or not it has reached its standards for being able to take care of the egg. So we really have to be careful and thoughtful about it, especially since we have to buy our materials and use them again. Testing our designs is important, but if your idea and plan of your design is unrealistic or doesn't reach the standards or is too expensive, I have learned from that, that thinking and figuring out what exactly you want to do is important too. 

Our next steps, specifically, for our group, is to really look into what we have made. To really think is if it actually works or not. We need to observe our design more as a whole group. But, then, our last step is to test it for real this time. With a real egg. The problem with our design is that the parachute does not work that well. We cut the parachute in half, thinking that it was too big for our small, cone shaped design. But, nope. We learned that bigger is better, we don't know what to do about it though. We think that it's worth the try. Our whole cost, as of right now, is sixty-four million dollars. We learned a lot in this design testing process of the project.