Back from a Time-wasting Session

Yes, I just returned from some guy's house. What was I doing there? To meet up with this guy and another guy. What for? For a physics project. What project? To build a solar car.

We are learning about thermal physics, yet I cannot see the relavance between that and building a solar car, which to me is more of engineering. So why are we given something irrelavant? There is a solar car competition. So, I suppose the rest is self-explanatory.

These two guys and I went to East Point to get lunch for them and materials for our project. We bought sticks-ice-cream sticks, satay sticks etc. for the framework, and tennis balls for the bottle cap which we used as wheels. The queing up alone at NTUC fairprice burned some 20 minutes and I was getting quite impatient.

We went back to the house and had lunch and started on the project. We had no machines, so all our engineering were based on rough materials, which meant that many parts could not fit. We assembled and dismantled our frame several times with superglue, chisels to widen holes that could not fit (Chisel = hammer + screwdriver) and pliers.

Initially, we tried making a platform with lined up ice-cream sticks, but it was too heavy. We tore it apart and redesigned it a couple of times. Sometimes, our gears could not fit so we searched for more. Finally, we gave up and decided to use a "conveyor belt" system which generates relatively much friction. And later for some reason, one of the jokers took apart a working toy electronic machine gun and took out all the gears inside.

We had all the gears needed now, but still lacked an axle long enough. Someone soldered two pieces of steel axles together with lead which i purposely broke as it would have broken if used in the car anyway.

Finally, we devised a method of placing the motor upside-down under the platform beside the wheels that would possibly work with our lack of materials. It did not work. We put the motor right-side up and it worked thereafter. What a joke.

In the end, we messed up this poor guy's room successfully with wrappers, screws, tools, pieces of wood and tape and toys(including lego transformers, spinning tops and pull-and-go toys), and at last the front wheel drive mechanism was done. Unfortunately, being in the evening already and with the horrible solar panel efficiency, the sun was too weak to power it and we could not test it. Thus, session over.

What a waste of time when I could be doing something better like sleeping.