Have you ever wanted to make tea but you just don't have enough time? That's where my project comes in.  My project is basically tea concentrate in ice cube form. All you have to do is boil some water, plop the TeaCube in, and voila! in about a minute you have tea thats at a perfect temperature to drink.

First, I timed how long an ice-cube takes to melt in a cup of boiling water, and how many ice cubes are needed to make a good drinking temperature. (one ice cube; 30 seconds) One icecube is about 22 mL of water.

Second, I tested an artificial tea concentrate in hot water, and it worked well, but it tasted like artificial flavors.

Third, I made ice cubes out of the artificial tea concentrate, and tested them to make sure my idea worked, and it did. One TeaCube took about 1 minute to go from 180 °F to 133 °F (see timplapse). It was the perfect amount of tea. However, it did taste very artificial, and tea is good for you because of its natural ingredients, so I am working on creating a concentrate just from tea bags, water, and a little bit of honey.

Fourth, I made regular tea and timed it (see timelapse).  It took about 4 minutes to steep, 1 minute to add honey and throw away the tea bag, and it took about 9 minutes to cool down from  156 °F to 136 °F, which is a total of about 14 minutes compared to the 1 minute the TeaCube took.

Fifth, I made my own tea concentrate from Black Tea bags and honey.  I found that for one cup of boiling water, needs 5 tsp of my tea concentrate—which is about a standard size ice cube.

Vision for project moving forward: To make a package to hold the TeaCube, so it is easier to handle in your hands.

I went to my friends house this weekend and with the small amount of snow we had we threw together a jump and tested out the maiden run of the ski puller. Right in the begining you can hear a loud pop which is the side of the spool snapping off from the pressure of the rope. I picked up a bigger and stronger spool at another friends house which I will cut down to size and use instead. The initial speed of the puller was a little slow with two batteries, but it's most likely because I haven't recharged them yet since I bought them over 2 months ago.

This project is a solution that I came up with to solve the problem of subway cars getting overcrowded very quickly. I've come up with the idea to have sensors that track the capacity of the car by tracking the number of people going in and out.  The sensor would be able to count people going in and out from two different sides (preferably), and along with the sensors there would be an indicator to show how full the car is. There would be lights about the doors, red for full, yellow for half full (or starting to get full), and green indicating that more people can go into the car.

I came to the realization that this is a problem because when going on the subway it is so crowded that you're practically pressed up against someone, the feeling can almost be asphyxiating from being so close to everyone else. Another issue that the crowd causes, is that there is nowhere for people to hold onto for safety, because everyone has taken up all the spots.  So my idea will help fix that because each car will have a light showing the capacity of each car, and how full the car is. 

This is my prototype of the light alarm clock. A common issue that people deal with in the morning is not being able to wake up in a way that is natural and non-disruptive. Regular alarm clocks are often annoying and leave people feeling groggy for the rest of the day.

The main idea of this prototype is that the half of the glass will be frosted. As the alarm is set off, the lights will grow gradually brighter and the glass casing will turn, revealing the unfrosted side for a brighter light. The frosted side provides non-direct lighting for times when you're just using the alarm clock as a lamp. Additionally I will try to add a sound feature for the snooze option, where "natural" sounds would play along with the light growing brighter.

*The second photo is an alternative design. It's the same thing but shaped like a lightbulb.

I started off with barinstorming ideas when it finally hit me. My little sister has always wanted a doll house she could play with her dolls in, but what if it was a special kind of dollhouse? The goal from there on was to make an electrical dollhouse and to incorrporate not only the ide of a dollhouse but the buld-it-yuourself idea. 

I started drawing my plans of what i thouhgt it might look like after and then building small furniture and a room.

A room in my house has three well. One at the bottom, one was the middle, and one at the top. Thr top one is held up by pillars (goalie tubes) and hopefully plexiglass.

By the end I want to have more than one room and I was there to be lights and things that work electrically or mechanically.

To start off the project, prototypes were made to figure out how the clock would work.

First a mechanical prototype was made using a metal kit. This helped me learn how much power it took to actually flip a lighswitch.

Next, an electric prototype was made using a lego robotics kit, and this gave an example for how the gears would work. There would be a gear rack sliding, moved by a larger gear.

To start off the light switcher, first I simply got an arduino to spin a servo back and fourth.

Next, I attatched an LCD to the arduino, and found a way to display the time on it.

Lastly, the gears arrived and the circular gear was attatched to the arduino.

I plan to get a box to set everything in, bars to mount on the gear rack, and a remote to control the alarm.

At first, I was working on an alarm clock that wakes you up by shocking you. However, after exploring many ideas, I was reminded of the tipping bed that was made by Mr. Moody's former class, and began to work on that.

As it stands, the bed functions. However, it is an inefficient system that is breaking, and will probably collapse soon. So from there I had two options: to repair the current mechanism and make it stronger, or build a new one.

I found that I would need something that could slow the fall of the bed, and reduce the strain on the current mechanism. From there, I found that chairs do precisely that. Chairs use a gas spring, which uses pressurized nitrogen gas and lubricant to move up and down. The base is a sort of container containing those things, and then there is a metal rod, that acts as a piston to apply pressure to the nitrogen gas. Using that, I can slow the fall of the bed. I also thought that, since it is a chair, it can support a person, so it could potentially replace the mechanism altogether.

I took a chair and removed the back, the seat and the wheels, so that the only thing left is the base and the gas spring.

Currently I am raising the bed up so that the chair can actually fit underneath the bed at full extension. Then I have to build a base on the chair, and mount the chair to the bottom of the bed. Then I'll make a simple lever-based trigger mechanism to activate the bed.

From there, if time permits, I would hopefully be able set that up to an electronic mechanism to trigger it, and then set that up to a timer to wake you up in the morning.

Once I put the string through the backpack and tested it again. I came to the conclusion that there was not enough resistance to prevent the string from just pulling all the way through the back pack and out of it. So I strung it so that the string had multiple turns and points of friction, to try and slow down the rate at which the string would be pulled through. The increased amount of string present in the backpack has lead to the additional perk of providing more back support. After I  had strung everything I noticed that the strings were arbitrarily strewn across the backpack so I re strung it all so that all the strings were collected together going through extra aluminum that I had left over after trimming the stool. This made it aestetically more appealing as well as providing a nice support on your back.