Time's Up!

So the hours ticked by, 10:30 arrived, and the "big project" came due. Most of the class appeared to have been there most of the night, except for the ones that weren't there because they'd bailed out in the middle of the night to sleep. The project had grown all over the classroom. It was probably fortunate that spring break starts tomorrow.

We had an audience appear out of thin air; students, staff, and other faculty came to see what they'd come up with and if it would work.

What's it all about? This:

The first group made an effort at aesthetics. A buddy I work with is always saying "you can't polish a turd." With about 17 hours to go the class told me that all that was left was "tweaking." I explained to them that if you start with something that doesn't work you can't tweak it. I may have used the former expression.

This one was mostly about marbles, although there is also a funnel full of sand toward the beginning. In the time I was around we spent quite a bit of time de-bugging this bit, but apparently at one time or another during the night they all worked (although not all at one time).

The next group called itself "Katie." This part worked fairly well, although I bet were they to do it again (Critical Path Oswald project, Joe?) they won't use dominoes. They proved difficult to set up and keep up. Mostly they were proud of their purple "car of death" which you can see at the end of the domino line. The domino pushes the car down the ramp and then a razor blade taped to the car pops a water balloon.

They also had a little purple walking robot, but he didn't survive the all nighter. It worked fine for the stand alone project, but when married together it lost it's spot.

The next group was Team Fitzy, for reasons that will become clearer later. This section of the gadget appeared to work almost perfectly during the very first run at 10:30 and then fairly strangely never really went straight through again.

They had a happy face balloon which they said represented their dreams. It was popped by a blade they anthropromophized as me.

The last group, "team mongoose" built themselves a steel superstructure. Actually they apparently built it three times. Once too wide to fit in the man door, correcting the width but being to long to get into the elevator, and then just right. I hadn't intended one of the objectives for the assignment to address don't build something that won't go through the door, but its a nice surprise addition.

The menorah at the end stood in for the mars light we'd originally gotten as it didn't make it through the night either.

Some details:

Here's Fitzy.
I said no living things. I didn't want to wind up in the paper: "Theatre professor assigns project that kills animal." But they did it anyway. I guess it worked out ok and it was a mood elevator for everyone.

Here you can see the happy face balloon and the "wheel of death."

when the "wheel of death" started to become unreliable we began to call it the "wheel of threat."

One of the more interesting components of the machine involved a clip light shield, sand, a plastic baggie, and a hot wire cutter.

It was fairly cool, although it probably could have used a little de-bugging. That, and you have to remember to turn it on.

Here's the end. The last stage had to press a button.

I think overall it went real well. Hopefully I will be able to post video of the last trial soon. I wish it had gone through all the way. As it was we had a little bit of an anti-climax in doing all of that work and then having to abandon it without once seeing a complete run.

Maybe next year.