Make your own Grabber Arm!

Got something that's just out or reach? Now you can make a grabber arm that can help you retrieve things!

Materials:

• 8 craft sticks
• 2 milkshake straws, cut into quarters
• 2 skewers
• Tape

Optional:

• Pipe cleaners
• Rubber bands
• 2 cups

Procedure:

1. Create the four beams by sticking a craft stick into the straw pieces are each end leaving a small gap in the straw between the two craft sticks.

2. Break off a small piece of skewer and tape it at the edge of each straw piece in order to help reinforce them.

3. Attach two of the beams together by sticking the pointed end of the skewer into the straw pieces in the beams. Do this for both pairs of beams.

4. Put more straw pieces on the end of the one side of the "X" created by the attached beams for both sets.

5. Line up the upper and lower parts of the beam so that the newly attached straws overlap and stick a skewer piece though the straw pieces. Use tape and skewer pieces to reinforce as necessary.

6. Design the grabber claw. This can be more pieces of crafts stick, bent pipe cleaners, rubber bands or anything else you can think of that will help you pick up an item.

7. Test your grabber by trying to pick up the cups.

Engineering involved: This grabber is a simple machine that serves to show the importance of design. While the basics remain the same, this grabber can be customized to pick up different types of objects with different types of claws. Just like any good machinery, it can be redesigned for the optimal effect, whether it needs to be able to hook into something or have a better grip using the rubber bands. And just like a real engineer, it's up to you to experiment and figure out the best way of completing a task. Good luck and happy testing!

For more pictures and information go to: http://www.instructables.com/id/Extending-Grabber/?ALLSTEPS

GoldieBlox - You Build Your Toys

Everyone's played with toys before, but what about building your own? Step aside Legos, GoldieBlox is here to give you a taste of engineering with toys as the dessert. Besides being an awesome building set, GoldieBlox's goal is to "disrupt the pink aisle" and give young girls a chance to develop their engineering skills. Debbie Sterling, a mechanical engineering major from Stanford, wanted GoldieBlox to inspire the next generation of female engineers. Here are a couple of videos from GoldieBlox showcasing how much fun GoldieBlox can be:

GoldieBlox SuperBowl Ad

GoldieBlox & Rube Goldberg "Princess Machine"

Interested in purchasing a GoldieBlox product? Click here!

Design Challenges

Hey there, Tinkerers!

Ever wonder how satellites and spaceships are able to turn and change their paths in space? Check out this design challenge and see if you can do the same thing with magnets and a steel ball!

After you're done with the last one, here's another cool design challenge to check out. Try designing your own robotic arm to pick things up.

Let us know how it goes in the comments section! Did your design work? Or did you think of a better way of building it?  Maybe you used more than one magnet to steer your ball or different materials for your robotic arm. Try different things and see which design works best. Happy Tinkering!

Make Your Own Balloon Hovercraft

Materials:

• Blank CD or CD you don't want any more.
• Pop-top cap from a water bottle or dish soap bottle
• Balloon
• Glue

Procedure:

1) Glue the pop up lid firmly onto the CD directly over the hole in the CD and let the glue dry.

2) Push the pop-top cap closed. Blow up the balloon, then hold it so that no air escapes, but don't tie it off. Stretch the mouth of the balloon over the bottle cap
3) Place it on a flat surface and let it go.

What Happened:

Air from inside the balloon escapes through the hole in the pop up top and flows out and under the CD. The CD has a flat surface with an even weight. So the airflow flow from the balloon creates a thin layer of air between the surface of the floor and the bottom of the CD. This reduces the amount of friction between the CD and floor and the hovercraft easily floats and glides on the pocket of air. This is the same way in which a hockey puck table game works! You can make up all sorts of games!

For more information go to: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Aero_p033.shtml

Exploring Mars

The Curiosity Rover has been on Mars for about two years, collecting information so that scientists here on Earth can figure out whether or not Mars ever could or ever did support microbial life. The rover has a mass of about 900 kg and is about as big as a car. Ever wonder how something that big and that heavy landed on the surface of Mars?  A group of very smart and talented engineers and scientists developed the technology to make this possible. Watch this video to learn more about the landing sequence.

            What makes Curiosity special is that it can not only take pictures of the surface and acquire information about things like the weather on Mars; Curiosity is able to drill and scoop up the contents of rocks and soil, deliver a small sample to instruments inside the rover, find out what elements the sample is made of, and send all of that information back to the scientists on earth.

           

 A few more fun facts about Curiosity:

1.     It has 17 cameras on board. Some were used to help the rover land on the surface, some are used to take pictures so that the rover and people down here can know where it’s located, and some are used to take selfies! 

This selfie was taken by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI).

2.     Engineers can drive the rover themselves by telling it exactly where to go and how to get there OR they can tell the rover where they want it to go and the rover figures out its own safe path to its destination.

3.     The holes in the wheels are particularly interesting. They let the dirt out if it gets trapped inside the wheel, BUT they also spell out the letters J-P-L in Morse Code! JPL stands for Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the NASA center that developed Curiosity. So now everywhere the rover goes, it leaves these markings that spell JPL all over Mars!

4.     One of the ways Curiosity can analyze rocks and soil by “zapping” them with a laser! The instrument that does this, ChemCam, is located where you see the big circle on Curiosity’s “head.”

From landing Curiosity to how it’s being operated until today, exploration of this world outside of our own is made possible by engineers and not just aerospace engineers. A project as big as this needs mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, and computer scientists as well. To date, Curiosity has been making some amazing discoveries. To find out more and stay up to date on the mission, visit the mission's page at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/  or check out Curiosity’s Twitter account! 

Make your own Rubber Band car!

How can you make a car with just things around your house? Read on to find out!

The Experiment

Materials:

• 2 paper or plastic cups with lids
• Scissors
• Duct tape
• Stick
• 3-4 rubber bands
• 1 paperclip
• beads with big holes
• Pen or pencil

Try it out:

1. Cut out a small hole on the bottom of each cup. Make sure that the holes line up when you put the bottoms of both cups together.
2. Tape the bottom of both cups together.
3. Poke holes in the center of the lids of both cups. 
4. Connect the rubber bands together by looping them into each other, making a chain. You can do this by putting one rubber band half way through the other, and tucking one end through the center, like this: 
   
5. Thread the rubber band chain through the one lid, the hole in the bottom of the cups and the other lid.
6. Loop a paper clip through one end of the rubber band chain to stop it from going into the cup. 
7. On the other end, put a bead in the rubber band, and then put the stick through the remaining end of the rubber band loop. Your finished car should look something like this:
   
8. Twist up the rubber band and let the car go! 

What's happening

When the rubber band is twisted, it is storing potential energy. Potential energy is energy that is stored in an object. When the rubber band is released, this energy gets turned into mechanical energy. Mechanical energy is energy that does work. 

The only place this energy can be let out is in the paper cups, causing the paper cups to turn, making your car move forward. 

If you thought this was cool...

This project is related to mechanical engineering. You can find out more here. Some concepts used in this project are potential and mechanical energy. You can find out more about energy through this project.

Make your own Marble Run!

Can you get a marble to drop into a cup from the other side of the room? Try out this experiment and find out!

Tackling Friction

Friction is a force that helps things slow down when they're moving. Friction is what makes your brakes work on your bike or car, and what helps a ball roll on the ground. But what happens when you want to have less friction? Try out this experiment and see if you can figure it out!

The Experiment

This experiment is based on a similar experiment by education.com.

Materials:

shoebox
balloon
scissors
straws
tape
ruler

Try it out:

1. Ask an adult to help you cut a small hole on one side of the box. This is where the end of the balloon will stick out.
2. Put the balloon through the hole so that the large part of the balloon is inside the box and the end is sticking out.
3. Blow up the balloon, then hold the end closed with your fingers. Put the box on a flat surface, like the floor, and use tape to mark the starting point.
4. Let go and measure how far the box travels. Try this a couple of times.
5. Now cover the floor with straws like this. You'll need at least 3 feet of straws:

    6. Place the box and balloon on the straws and see how far they go this time.

    7. Finally, glue or tape two straws to the bottom of the box like a sled

   8. Place the box and balloon back on the floor and see how far they go.

Which box went the farthest? Why do you think that is?

What's happening

Friction is a force that acts in the opposite direction as the direction something is moving. When the box moves forward, friction pulls it back. The stronger the friction is, the less the box can move.

What makes friction stronger? There are a couple of different things. One is how rough the surface is. A rough surface like carpet or the street will have more friction than a smooth surface like a wood floor. When you pushed the box on the lined up straws, the straws roll around and have very little friction because they are very smooth.

Another is the surface area of the object that is touching the floor. If the surface area of the object is bigger, that means the friction can push on a big area, which makes the friction stronger. When you glued the two straws on the bottom of the box, you gave the friction less surface area to push on. That makes the friction weaker so the box can move farther.

If you thought this was cool...

This experiment is related to mechanical engineering. You can find out more here.
Some ideas from physics in this experiment include forces and friction.

Make your own balloon-powered car!

Here's how to make a car that's powered by balloons! Can you get your car to move? How far does it go?