Inventors Club Fall 2015 Wrap-Up

Go-cart research.

This Saturday marks the end of another round of Inventors Club, and we’re expecting quite a variety of projects to be finished and demonstrated for friends and family.  This time around we have all sorts of things from a crossbow and a mechanical pencil shooter, to a handmade sheep that rolls around and a cardboard dog with lights that blink.  We’ll have a couple cars, a couple airplanes, and even a hovercraft.  There’s a portable Nintendo 64, a binary adder circuit, and an audio amplifier or two.  There will even be at least one robot, the beginnings of a go-cart, and a Mars rover.

Working on the circuits for a robot.

Every session of Inventors Club ends with the Big Show.  This is when the students get to show off what they’ve been working on, and explain it to their loved ones and everyone else.  At the Bakken, we believe that discussing one’s work is an essential part of inventing and engineering, whether that’s done through talking or writing.  Because of that, we like to give our participants the chance to explain their work to a group of people, and also do a small write-up about it.  Hopefully this provides an opportunity to work on their communication skills, and also helps them feel a sense of pride in what they’ve accomplished.

An in-depth discussion on soldering.

This may be the end of the fall session, and with all the holidays coming up we won’t have the next one starting until the last Saturday of January, but we’re certainly looking forward to seeing another set of new projects, and to seeing the long-term projects return for more work.  In the interim we are still running our Thursday night “Passport to Invention” open workshop program, so any child ages 9 and up can still feed that hunger for inventing all winter long.

Inventors Club Fall 2015

Constructing the cam assembly.

The Fall 2015 session of Inventors Club has begun, and what a start we’ve had.  In both the morning and afternoon groups we spent the first Saturday of the program discussing circuit diagrams and cams.  We talked about how to read a simple circuit diagram, and what some of the most common symbols mean.  This prepared everyone for working with the circuits needed for our big group project.  All that was needed was a conversation about cams.  After talking about what cams are, and various ways they can be used, everyone started making their own cam and switch assembly.  The goal of the project was that everyone has a cam on a motor which presses a switch when it turns.  Then, with the motor running, the switch spends half the time pressed and half the time released, and is connected to two LEDs so that when it goes between pressed and released the circuit alternates between lighting one LED or the other.  After the second Saturday of working on this we were able to put everyone’s LEDs together and watch them all blink in a fun sparkly display. 

Discussing the PWM circuit.

On the second day, the morning group continued working on the cams and switches, but in the afternoon we added a whole new piece.  The afternoon group used a more complicated circuit diagram to build a pulse width modulation (PWM) circuit.  As usual, we of course started with a discussion of PWM and how it can be used to control the speed of a motor.  Some of the mentors even used an oscilloscope to show the students what the electricity from a PWM circuit is doing and how it affects a motor.  The students added their PWM circuits to the cam circuits they already built, and we were able to not only blink the LEDs, but also control the rate of each pair’s blinking.

Now that we’re up to week 3 it’s time to start working on individual projects. The kids will spend the next 4 weeks designing, building, improving, and showing off their own creations. Bakken staff and mentors will help them create with our tools and materials whatever fun things they can imagine. Then, after showing it all off to parents, friends, and museum visitors, the students will take home their inventions.

Learning to use the materials and tools.

Inventors Club Spring 2015 - Midway-ish Update

Building simple circuits.

It seems like it was only yesterday that we were finishing up our winter sessions of Inventors Club and LEGO Robotics, but here we are already in the thick of it with spring Inventors Club, and LEGOs about to start up again.  These last two Saturdays we had our introductory activities with the Inventors Club kids.  On the first day we had fun with some of our usual activities like simple circuit building, and safety training for the workshop. 

However, this time we had a couple new goings-on.  Both the morning and afternoon groups got to meet, hear from, and work with Rich Kronfeld, our Inventor in Residence.  He joined us to talk about his new invention, the Raht Racer (a pedal powered electric car/bike hybrid), and help the kids work on the activities of these last two weeks.

Rich explaining the Raht Racer.

Prototyping a slot car track.

Also, to coincide with having Rich and the Raht Racer here at the museum, we worked on making our own vehicles in the form of homemade slot car tracks, and then our own homemade slot cars to run on those tracks.

Testing out a track-powered car.

To run the cars, we connected hand crank generators to the tracks so that, like the Raht Racer, our vehicles could also be human powered.  There were a lot of creative solutions to the challenges of both the track and the car, and it was great to see what neat new ideas the kids were able to come up with.

Now that we’re coming up on week three, the kids will be starting their own individual projects to take home on May 16.  A small group of volunteers, instead of working on their own projects, will work as a group along with Rich and Bakken staff on one large group project related to the previous activities, and Rich’s invention.  We look forward to seeing what they create, and showcasing it both in the museum and elsewhere.

Safety training and workshop tour.

Exploration!

LEGO Robotics Halfway Update Winter 2015

We’re halfway through our winter LEGO Robotics classes here at the Bakken Museum, and we’re starting to really get into the meat of what we can do with these robots.  The first week we built them, and learned how to design simple programs right on the robots themselves.  We did some simple challenges at the end of the class like driving the robot in basic shapes, such as a square or a circle.

This last Saturday, we got out the laptops and learned to program our robots with the help of computers.  For this we bumped up the difficulty of the challenges, and the robots had to make their way through a simple maze, or use sensors to either interact with or avoid their surroundings.

For this upcoming Saturday we’re going to learn how to more effectively use the sensors for what we want the robot to do in order to get ready for the big show at the end of class next week.  At the big show, family and friends will be able to see the results of all our work as we demonstrate our skills by having the robots safely drive themselves along a "road" in the morning, and with a sensor-dependent parade in the afternoon.  We’ll give more details on those in another post.

We have another round of our LEGO Robotics class starting up in the spring on April 25^th, so check out the museum’s website for information on how to sign up.  http://www.thebakken.org/youth-programs

Winter Carnival

The winter session of Inventors Club began with a carnival. Set up around the room we had four carnival games set up for the students.

"Hey, wait a minute. There is something in this jar!" BUSTED We were in fact playing crooked carnival games.

Thus began our challenge: Can you design a tool that will help you win the carnival game every time. We even turned the process of solving the challenge into a game.

Each time the students tried out their device, regardless of the results, they got more materials. The game was designed to encourage the students to fail fast when prototyping and try lots of different solutions.

Our students came up with many unique and creative solutions to help them master our crooked carnival games.

Up Next Safety Training!

Marble Machines as Mechanical Computing Machines

We have been investigating mechanical computing machines during Inventors Club this fall. So natural we wanted to build our own.

Our Explorers group in the morning were working in teams to make a marble machine that would guide a marble from the top corner to the bottom corner of the board. The marble machine got more interesting when the students added circuits into their machines. When the marbles arrived  at the end of their journey they completed a circuit, announcing to the world that their journey was complete.


Afternoon Inventors were also working on the Computing Machines. Their goal was a little more intricate. They were challenged to develop a machine that would count the number of marbles put into the system or do something after 5 marbles were added to the machine.

Adventures in Mechanical Computing - Part 2

The more I read about mechanical computers the more fascinated I become. I wanted to share some of the stories and resources I shared with the Inventors Club students from the Fall session.

To understand what a mechanical computer is we have to think about what a computer is. I think of a computer as a machine that deals with information. You give a computer some input, the computer works with  that information and gives you some information back. If we think about computers in this broad sense we can argue that computers have been around for 1000's of years.

One of the oldest examples is the Antikythera. This machine was a complicated system of gears that would model the motion of the planets and moon. It even predicted eclipses. It is speculated to be the work of Archimedes. It is an amazing feat of engineering. There is a great  NOVA episode exploring this early computer and the story of how a group of scientist reversed engineered this complicated device. It is fascinating!

Charles Babbage often gets credit for designing the first modern day digital analogue computer. Babbage started first on a difference engine in 1822. This machine would calculate polynomial functions by subtraction. Before he completed his device he began to imagine a more sophisticated machine that could perform many more operations. This machine came to be known as the Analytical Engine.

Here are some fun examples of more recently constructed mechanical computing machines.

Binary Adder - This machine is not particularly old, but I still think it is pretty interesting.

The machine uses marbles to add binary numbers together. Each rocker can represent a 0 or 1. Here is a good video describing how it works. 

Another fun mechanical computer is Evil Mad Scientist's giant DigiComp II.  This machines uses marbles, or eight balls in Evil Mad Scientist's case, to do addition, subtraction, or many other computations. 

Our final example of a mechanical computer is a ball clock. In this machine each marble represents a unit of time. Once a minute a new ball would be added to the top of the ramp. Can you tell what time it is according to this clock?

Were you thinking 8:38? Give your self a back on the back. 

Adventures in Mechanical Computing

During the Fall session of Inventors Club we are exploring mechanical computing.

Most of the first mechanical computers were really mechanical counters so that is where we are starting. During the first two weeks of our Inventors Club, we are making a machine that can count marbles. We were inspired by our friends in the Tinkering Studio at the Exploratorium who have been doing some very creative work with marble machines. We took that same basic setup and applied a layer of historical context to create mechanical computers (more on that soon).

The challenge was to input data (a marble) into the upper left corner of the machine and collect the marbles in the lower right corner of the machine. For our older students we gave them the added challenge of "doing something interesting" once three marbles were entered into the machine. Many of our younger students also incorporated circuits into their machines as well.

Each team was given a set of materials(molding, dowels, PVC) to create the track for the marbles.

 The older students had to build the pegboard structure from scratch before they could do anything else. We just gave them the materials and a blueprint.

It was good practice building from a sketch and also served as tool training.

Henry got creative and found other materials from the workshop to incorporate into the machine. At the end of the run the marble activates a motor, spinning a propeller.

Another team collected their marbles into a bucket. Once three marbles dropped into the bucket the bucket would sink and the other bucket would rise.



We were experimenting with a binary digital counter circuit.
We were quite pleased with how well it worked! It gave us some new ideas that we hope to play with soon.

Drill Bits - A beginner's Guide

They are called spade bits!

We have many drill bits in the workshop at The Bakken. Over the years we have gotten pretty good at knowing when to use which bit. But we are always on the look out for good resources that we can learn from. Steve Hoefer's A beginners' guide to drills and bits is just that, a good resource. For example I learned that the drill bits that are relatively flat and are good for boring out a hole are called spade bits (I have been calling the speedbors, but I always suspected that was not the appropriate name). 

Hoefer's write up on drill bits share on BoingBoing is great. He coves the appropriate use and pros and cons for the most common and useful drill bits. I can proudly attest that we have most of them handy in the workshop. 

If you make holes, especially in wood, I strongly encourage you to read this article.

A beginners' guide to drills and bits - Boing Boing

Summer Camp Midsummer Update

Working on a problem solving challenge

The air is hot and muggy, the lakes are flooded, and half the roads are under construction.  It must be summer!  But of course the best part about summer is that it means we have our science day camp here at the Bakken.  Summer Camp at the Bakken Museum is where kids from 2nd through 9th grade get to spend the day at the museum, Monday through Friday, learning useful science and engineering skills, and using our student workshop to make their very own creation to take home at the end of the week.  In addition to working on their big project, they also work in groups on creative problem solving challenges, play games, build skills with circuits and tools, and make daily magic tricks to bring home to impress friends and family.  With all that we even find some time to spend outside getting our daily dose of vitamin D.

Working on a project

This week is not only the Best Days of the Bakken (our free Aquatennial 5-day event), but it also marks the halfway point for this year's summer camp.  As usual, the array of projects we've seen the kids create is nothing short of outstanding.  From card readers and candy carrying cars, to foosball and crocodiles, and just about everything in between.

Next week we're jumping right back into it with our all girls week, then it's just a few more weeks until it's back to school time.  In September we'll be starting up our usual school year programs.  Lego Robotics, Inventors Club, and Thursday night Open Workshop times will all be after camp is finished, with registration for Legos and Inventors Club opening up on the website soon.

Working on fun!

So far it's been a fantastic summer, and we look forward to the rest being just as great!