Simple machines

What are simple machines?

A simple machine is a mechanical device that changes the direction or magnitude of a force. In general, they can be defined as the simplest mechanisms that use mechanical advantage (also called leverage) to multiply force.

Types of simple machines?

There are four types of simple machines: the lever, the inclined plane (wedge and screw in some cases), the pulley, the wheel and axle (also gears).

Lever:





A lever is a simple machine that makes work easier for use; it involves moving a load around a pivot using a force. Many of our basic tools use levers, including scissors (2 class 1 levers), pliers (2 class 1 levers), hammer claws (a single class 2 lever), nut crackers (2 class 2 levers), and tongs (2 class 3 levers).

Applying a force to one end of the rigid object causes it to pivot about the fulcrum, causing a magnification of the force at another point along the rigid object. There are three classes of levers, depending on where the input force, output force, and fulcrum are in relation to each other. Baseball bats, seesaws, wheelbarrows, and crowbars are types of levers too.

The inclined planes



An inclined plane is a plane surface set at an angle to another surface with one end higher than the other, used as an aid for raising or lowering a load.. This results in doing the same amount of work by applying the force over a longer distance. The most basic inclined plane is a ramp; it requires less force to move up a ramp to a higher elevation than to climb to that height vertically. The wedge is often considered a specific type of inclined plane.

The pulley





A pulley is a wheel with a groove along its edge, where a rope or cable can be placed. It uses the principle of applying force over a longer distance, and also the tension in the rope or cable, to reduce the magnitude of the necessary force. Complex systems of pulleys can be used to greatly reduce the force that must be applied initially to move an object.

The wheel and axle





A wheel is a circular device that is attached to a rigid bar in its center. A force applied to the wheel causes the axle to rotate, which can be used to magnify the force (by, for example, having a rope wind around the axle). Alternately, a force applied to provide rotation on the axle translates into rotation of the wheel. It can be viewed as a type of lever that rotates around a center fulcrum. Ferris wheels, tires, and rolling pins are examples of wheels and axles.

Cites I used

www.enchantedlearning.com/physics/machines/Levers.shtml

https://www.irsc.edu/.../SC-Simple-Machines.pdf

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_machine

http://physics.about.com/od/physicsintherealworld/p/simplemachines.htm

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mechanics/lever.html

Mousetrap car

In physics we had to make a mousetrap car. First i will talk about how to make this car and then the difficulties I came across while making this.

First you will need:

2: 14 inch knitting needles 2.5 mm
2: 10 inch knitting needles 2.25 mm
2: axles- 3D printed
2: front wheels 2.5 cm- 3D printed
2: back wheels 5 cm- 3D printed
3: supports- 3D printed
1: mousetrap
4: nuts
4: zip ties
4: balloons
Hot glue gun
nylon non stretch string

1. buy the supplies
2. design the wheels, axles, and supports and print the things
3. cut the end off and the tip off of the 10 inch needles
4. cut the needle in half
5. glue one of the nuts onto the wheels but make sure that none of the glue gets on top the nut or in the hole
6. put one of the cut wires into the nut and wheel's hole and bend the end of the wire (optional) and then glue it to the wheel
7. place one of the axles onto the wire
8. repeat number 5
9. put the wheel and nut onto the wire with the axle and repeat number 6
10. once you have finished one of the axles and wheels repeat steps 5-9 again using the other two wheels
11. now put the axle with the small wheels all the way to the end of the two 14 inch needles, this will be the front of your car
12. remove everything off of the mousetrap besides the bronze rectangular arm
13. take your mousetrap and loosely tie 3 zip ties onto the side of the arm where the 10 inch needle will go
14. place ten inch needle, with the only tip cut off (metal part left on), in between the zip ties and tighten the zip ties
15. cut off the ends of the zip ties and hot glue the zip ties and needle
16. place the mousetrap on top of the axle and approximately see where the end of the mousetrap ends
17. now add one support a little before the end of the mousetrap
18. add another support about half the distance from the axle and the 1st support
19. repeat number 18 from the 2nd support
20. take the 2nd axle and put it on about 1.5- 2 inches from the tip of the needle
21. glue all the supports and axles onto the needles.
22. glue the mousetrap onto the axle with small wheels and support with the arm facing the edge of the car
23. now tie the string onto the edge of the arm and glue the knot to the arm and cut the string long and tie a loop on the loose end of the string
24. tie the last zip tie to the axle with big wheels on the same side as the arm and cut the excess
25. cut the balloons , 2 to the size of the big wheels and 2 to the size of the small ones
26. put the balloons around the wheels

How it works:

Hook the loop onto the zip tie and turn the wheels to wind the string on the axle. Then let go of the string and watch the car go!

Problems I had and tips for you:

When 3D printing your wheels make sure they print equally as mine didn't and it went in a circle. Other than that you're good!

Pictures to explain things:


10 inch needles


14 inch needles



Full car



mousetrap with arm



big/back wheels with axle



back of car

Robotics

These days robots are used everywhere. Robots are now replacing jobs of humans mainly to do manual jobs. 

Robotics is a mix of electrical engineering, computer science and mechanical engineering. Robots are machines designed to take place of humans in dangerous or manual jobs. They are designed to have similar behaviors and appearances as humans. 

The idea of creating robots started  from the classical times but research didn't start until the 20th century. The original idea was to mimic human but now robots can be found anywhere, from little babies hand to factories where humans once worked.

In 1927 was when the first robot appeared in a movie. This robot was called  Maschinenmensch. The Three Laws of Robotics was created by Issac Asimov. The three laws were:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.^[1]

The first robot with biological features was created by William Grey Walter and it was called Elsie and Elmer. 

The first commercial robot came out in 1956 by the Unimation company by George Devol and was called Unimate. This robot later became into the first industrially installed robot in 1961

In 1975 the first programmable universal manipulation arm was created by Victor Schienmanand was called PUMA.

 

These days robots can be seen anywhere and can programmed to anything. But it all started from Leonardo Di Vinci when he designed the first humaniod robot in 1495. This robot could sit, stand, raise its visor and move its arms by itself. This whole robot was operated by pulleys and cables. Since then robots have greatly advanced, from punching cards to defusing bombs. 

In 1899 Nikola Tesla created the first remote controlled boat. This boat could move, stop, turn sides and also submerge in the water. He used radio waves to move the boat. 

Because of this invention space exploration is able to happen today. Tesla is considered to be the Father of robotics today. 

Robots have advanced so much throughout the years. Robots are used in pretty much every career today. They help us preform heart surgeries, explore space, defuse bombs, and even keep us entertained! The world would be a completely different place without robots.

Here is a game to show you how a space rover moves on Mars!

Rover NASA

programming

Computer programming is used everywhere. The reason why you don't notice it is because all the hard stuff is already done for you.

What is programming?

Programming is instructions a programmer gives to a computer so that it knows how to complete tasks.

How many computer languages are there? 

Today there are more than 2000 computer languages.

Why do we use more than one language?

Different types of languages instruct on different types of instructions. 

Operational languages are used to show how something is achieved, this makes the programmer figure out what is being achieved.

Declarative languages show what has to be achieved and make the computer figure out how to achieve it.

What the most common programming languages?

The top three programming languages are Java, C, and C++.

Java: This is used with compiler and is object oriented. I was created by Sun Microsystems in 1995 and is the most popular computer language today. Java is very organized and can be used in multiple coding opportunities. Also Java is most likely to taught in computer science classes and many books about computer programming use Java examples.

C: This was made by Dennis Ritchie for UNIX operation systems in 1972. It is designed to be compatible with many different computer but it does not and needs to be converted for each different type of computer. It is very fast.

C++: This is the updated version of C and was created by Bjarne Stroustrup in 1979 . It is used for larger projects and is supposed to be backwards compatible with C.  

Who uses programming? 

Today almost everyone is using programming because every key you press, every link you click on, every app you use is created by programming. Many adults know  how to code but now even kids are learning how to code. There are competitions for coding and creating apps, kids are making their own computers and game consoles and many more things. Learning to code has gotten so easy that anyone can learn it.

The Raspberry pi is one way where people can learn how to code a computer and they can learn how to create different things from the motherboard and computer hardware. They can create fully working computer to video games consoles.

Scratch is another way to learn how to create games and figure out how and why things move digitally. On Scratch you can create your own games or little animated clips of animals. 

These are only two way to learn how to code and there are many more out there. You can either learn online or from a book it is all up to you.

Play a game to get introduced to the coding world.
Code Combat

Technological singularity

Technological singularities is the hypothesis of technologies increasing in intelligence and one day exceed the human intellectual capacity and control which will eventually lead to the end of the human civilization.

Although Vernor Vinge, a science fiction writer, popularized the idea of technological singularity was first used by mathematician John von Nuemann in 1953. He used in a conversation with Stainslaw Ulam saying  "ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue." 

When people talk about technological singularity they talk about different ways it will come. One way is that there will be computer chips put into our brains and that will eventually turn us into robots and wipe out the human civilization. Another way is that they can create an artificial intelligence and load into a computer. Or that they can download their brains into a computer program and run that computer faster and faster. But the problem is that our brains can do so much and there is so little we know about our brain s and many neuroscientists won't agree to do this for at lest a couple of decades.

Although some people believe that singularity won't happen because it is not possible others believe it will. Ray Kurzweil works at Google and is trying to recreate his dad or "resurrecting" his dad. He wants to create a brain which will understand things in a higher form of thinking than human brains. He wants it to be able to taken in all the information on Google and then act like a personal assistant. He wants the assistant to be able to hear every phone call, read every email, and then give information you will need before you even know you want it. He wants to create  super intelligent assistant which can help you in every move. 

As you can see in the graph human intelligence is increasing in a linear fashion. When something is growing in a linear fashion then that means that one every 18 months the development would occur in a 1-2-3-4-5-6 fashion and over 15 years that means something would be 10 times as powerful, big and fast. Unlike the human intelligence, technological intelligence is doubling in size. This means that every 18 months the development is 1-2-4-8-16-32-64 unlike the human intelligence which is only progressing one at a time. Also this means that every 15 years something would be 1000 times as powerful, fast, and big. 

The symbol of singularity is an 0 with a line going through it. The line represents the linear development. the bottom right part represents the the exponential arc of things to come and the lopsidedness of it represents the forward-leaning growth.

Technological singularity will happen and it will happen a lot sooner than we think. Robots will be created with built in programming to make it have feelings and be a lot more intelligent than we are today. Our next step in evolution will be turning into robots. We will slowly keep adding chips into us until one day we will produce fully robot babies. These robots will slowly take place of humans and create the next step in evolution and a new race of humans.

My experience building a catapult.

This year for physics our first project was to make a catapult from a mousetrap. Now many of you might think "oh! that's so easy! just tape a spoon to it and your done!" but it wasn't that easy. For starters using a mousetrap, knowing that there is a possibility that the mousetrap could close on your finger and could possibly break it, is terrifying! You have to first get used holding and handling the mousetrap so that you can get comfortable man handling it. Another thing which was crucial to get a good grade on this was to make it go as far as possible. Now this where the math kicks in. You need to use trig and the Pythagorean Theorem to figure out the arm length and height of you catapult. But sadly even after doing the math a huge part of this is never giving up and trail and error! I ended up making five total catapults to find the best one.

At first being the lazy teenager self that I am, I looked on YouTube to see how to make this thing. I saw many videos but they were all pretty much the same and weren't really appealing.Then i saw one which looked different, cool, and not to difficult to recreate. So I went to Home Depot to buy an pack of mousetraps and other supplies. I also liked the idea that it used mousetrap, hex nuts and bolts, hot glue, and a bottle cap!

So i did some math and adjusted the size of the catapult to fit the range i wanted to to go. But when i tried it out it did't go nearly as far as wanted to go. :( So i asked my dad and searched how to change the design so that it could go farther.

So after my dad and I thought about different designs we figured that if we glue the mousetrap on a slant and not flat it will go farther and it worked! But we wanted it to go farther so we decided to adjust different lengths and found the perfect match.



My first catapult:
video i used: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Lm5vPSU_4



My Final catapult:



In the end of it I learned a lot and and had a lot of fun doing this even though some nights i slept and 1 a.m. and caught my fingers a couple of times in the trap. But hey that's how you learn!

Catapult history

Catapults have been around since ancient Greeks and Romans. They have been one of the most effective weapon used in warfare. Many catapults have been used by the Greek,, Romans, and Chinese. The first catapults were made to increase power and range of a crossbow. Catapults are ballistic devices used to throw object far without using explosive devices. The word catapult comes from the Latin word 'catapulta' which originally comes from the Greek word 'katapeltes'. The word split in to two words are 'kata' and 'pallo'. 'Kata' means downwards' and 'pallo' means to toss, to hurl. So the word literally means downwards toss or hurl. The first catapults were invented by the Greeks.

Diodorus Siculus first documented the use of mechanical arrow firing catapults in 399 BC. This was known as the early Ballista. Catapults were first introduced to Europe in England in 1216 during the Middle Ages. They first made their appearance during the Siege of Dover in England, 1216. Catapults were extremely important during this time because they were needed to fire missiles over tall castle and city walls. During Biological Warfare catapults were used to hurl diseased bodies over city walls to get them sick. This was used mainly by the French in 885-886 AD.

There were three main types of catapults: the ballista, the mangonel, and trebuchet.


The Ballista was basically a giant crossbow invented by the Greeks and later improved by the Romans. The smaller version of this is called the springald.


The Mangonel is the typical looking catapult. It was inventeed by the Romans in 400 BC. Another type of the Mangonel is called the Onager which in Latin means wild ass and it it called that because when fired the power and motion looks like a wild ass.


The Trebuchet was created by the Chinese in 300 BC to have the most force. The most powerful and famous Trebuchet is called the WarWolf.






Sources:
https://sites.google.com/site/physicsofcatapults/home/history-of-catapults
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catapult