{"id":1457,"date":"2009-01-17T14:36:20","date_gmt":"2009-01-17T19:36:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/?p=1457"},"modified":"2018-07-18T09:45:12","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T13:45:12","slug":"batteries-required","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2009\/01\/batteries-required\/","title":{"rendered":"No Batteries Required"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"No Batteries Required\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/gd627XXqR80?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>On a Friday afternoon in early December, students in <a href=\"http:\/\/lcsr.jhu.edu\/User:Aokamura\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Allison Okamura<\/a>\u2019s Mechanical Engineering Freshman Laboratory, working in teams of three, wound string around wooden dowels, carved foamcore with X-Acto knives, and cut pieces of balsa and plywood.<\/p>\n<p>Their assignment\u2014building a vehicle powered only by two mousetraps and six rubber bands\u2014is the culminating project in the fall semester\u2019s introductory mechanical engineering lab. \u201cThe mousetrap-and-rubber-band car is a classic design assignment,\u201d Okamura says. \u201cWhat makes this project interesting are the twists I\u2019ve added.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The \u201ctwists\u201d can be found in the assignment\u2019s 27 rules which, along with weight and size restrictions and a prohibition on pre-manufactured assemblies (not parts), state that the cars, when competing in a single-elimination tournament, must slalom between two two-liter soda bottles. And, as they traverse the 11-foot-long, paper-covered course, they must also lay down a continuous line from the start to finish gates. \u201cIt\u2019s usually the most mundane things that cause the greatest frustrations,\u201d Okamura says.<\/p>\n<p>Konstantinos Bertsatos and team have stripped the wheels and axels from a toy all-terrain vehicle. The four tires sit on the lab table as Bertsatos removes auto parts from a plastic storage container. There\u2019s a Liquid Glitter eyeliner in Starlit Black (\u201cThe package says it will make a continuous line,\u201d Bertsatos states, looking at the tube skeptically), a red plastic Nathan\u2019s Hot Dog fork, two CDs, a few pieces of bent aluminum, and the regulation mousetraps and rubberbands. The car, Flash Gordon, though unassembled, is predicted to be a strong contender by Jason Glasser, a first-year grad student and the lab\u2019s teaching assistant. \u201cIt\u2019s a great design,\u201d Glasser says, \u201cI especially like that they\u2019re tilting the axel because it takes advantage of the geometry of the situation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the following Monday afternoon, though, neither the tilted axel nor the Sharpie marker (which replaced the eyeliner) really mattered. Eighteen inches into the course, a piece of string wrapped around a dowel caught on the car\u2019s frame and Flash Gordon never made it to the first soda bottle.<\/p>\n<p>Last One Done, a car that Glasser thought had potential if the students could resolve some steering problems, at first appeared to work beautifully. The crowd cheered as the car, the first to successfully maneuver through the course, crossed the finish line. In the starting line excitement, though, the magic marker\u2019s cap hadn\u2019t been removed. No line was drawn so Last One Done was eliminated.<\/p>\n<p>The winner turned out to be Awesome-O. The secret to the car\u2019s success? Team member Nicholas Salzman explains, \u201cWe built our own practice course, calibrated the car again and again and again, and knew exactly how we needed to angle it. That\u2019s how we did it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=gd627XXqR80\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">VIEW VIDEO<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a Friday afternoon in early December, students in Allison Okamura\u2019s Mechanical Engineering Freshman Laboratory, working in teams of three, wound string around wooden dowels, carved foamcore with X-Acto knives, and cut pieces of balsa and plywood. Their assignment\u2014building a vehicle powered only by two mousetraps and six rubber bands\u2014is the culminating project in the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-development","issue-winter-2009"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>No Batteries Required - JHU Engineering Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/magazine-archive\/2009\/01\/batteries-required\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"No Batteries Required - JHU Engineering Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On a Friday afternoon in early December, students in Allison Okamura\u2019s Mechanical Engineering Freshman Laboratory, working in teams of three, wound string around wooden dowels, carved foamcore with X-Acto knives, and cut pieces of balsa and plywood. 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