Inventions Final Project

On Wednesday, March 5th, a final project is due for this class.

Requirements:

• Some independent project which demonstrates at least a few facets of what you have learned in this class. It does not need to encompass every concept we have studied, though it should be chosen carefully. You want the project to be successful (in whatever way that is defined in advance) and challenging enough to be worthy of your efforts.

• Proposal (preliminary due Wednesday 2/19). Final proposal due Monday, 2/24)

• Written description and analysis of your project. (to be explained later.)

• 10-minute presentation to your classmates on March 5th.

• Students may work alone or choose one partner. If you are working as a team, it needs to be spelled out carefully which student will contribute which aspects to the project.

Possible ideas:

• Further work on your Rube Goldberg machine, possibly incorporating crickets. You could also develop the concept more, the design and theme, not just the functionality.

• Some other kind of animated art. (moving mobile, interactive art, taking found objects, making sculpture that somehow takes advantage of some of the functionality of the object. - a tape player that exposes the inner workings and somehow plays some recording (a loop of tape.)

• A practical or silly "invention" Examples: a device that can hit my snooze button on my alarm clock by remote control. A car that does some special task of your design: (uses a cricket to follow a traced line and carries milk and cookies from one part of my house to another. An automatic plant watering device which measures the moisture of the soil and waters the plant when the soil is dry.

• Feel free to come up with your own,

Proposal:

a) Description

b) Who is working on it and if it is more than yourself, explain in detail who will be responsible for which part.

c) Materials needed. Specify which materials you will supply and which I need to help you acquire (with advance notice.)

d) Plan of attack. (general outline of what you will hope to achieve by what personal deadline.

e) Definition of success. (Include some possible plan-B scenarios: what would be "good enough" in case it does not work perfectly?