Early American Energy Project: Reflection

     We had time to work on what our machine would look like in class last week. We already had a design in mind: using a water wheel connected to a circle by an axle and putting a stirring rod on the circle so it could agitate the milk as it spun. Since we knew our plan already, we kind of just goofed off for the rest of class, not realizing the few problems we would run into while building. I think that if we had focused on some key details of our design - rather than the general concept - we would have had an easier time.

     The problem started with cutting the circles. As you can see, they aren't very circular. This was because I could not find the circular saw, and I had not used a buzz saw in awhile. Anyway, when Dylan tried to drill cups into the water wheel (the bigger circle) the circle split and he had to make an entirely new one.

      To combat this in the future, the project should have a requirement forcing the students to turn in a detailed schematic of their machines, including how each part of the machine looks and functions. This would solve the issue we encountered when constructing the water wheel; it fell apart when we tried attaching the slats that would catch the water and turn the wheel. Focusing on the details would have made us create a specific, easy design for the wheel, which would have saved time and confusion.

Dylan, after destroying the original water wheel.

Me trying to find one drill bit in a bag full of screws and wrench sockets.

 Bella working on making the stands she and I built look good.

     Another task that could be added to up the difficulty of the machine and would require more creativity from the builders would be to add either a realism check or a space constraint. For example, say that all of the machines had to fit inside a cardboard box of Jolly's choosing. That would definitely add some (Apollo 13-esque) challenge to the project. The realism check could be applied to the smaller tasks. For example, it could be required of groups to actually churn butter or to actually dig a well. It would be impractical for a group to actually pull a log to town using wind power, so it would work best with the smaller tasks.

     Overall, our design was very small and mobile (as opposed to Claire's, Christophe's and Brien's huge, albeit amazing, wood saw).
     Having the groups go through and complete the tasks that were considered routine in colonial days would give them a better insight as to how hard it was to get things done before modern technology existed.