By Kyle Hammer, Rachel Houlihan, Justin Keizer, and Marilynn Hunt
The reverse engineering project was the first project of the year. It lasted about two weeks. Before the project started, we learned about conceptual sketches, work ethics, and the purpose of engineering. These were stepping stones for our project. Our goal was to disassemble an object, discover how it works, learn about its manufacturing process, and then create a presentation and paper to spread our findings.
Our group decided to reverse engineer a pullback toy car. We took it apart, observed the parts, and then made a hypothesis on how it ran. Afterwards we did a lot of research on pullback cars. We confirmed our hypothesis and learned more about the process of making toy cars. It was fairly easy to understand how the car's subsystems worked together to form the system, but fascinating regardless.
Our group decided to reverse engineer a pullback toy car. We took it apart, observed the parts, and then made a hypothesis on how it ran. Afterwards we did a lot of research on pullback cars. We confirmed our hypothesis and learned more about the process of making toy cars. It was fairly easy to understand how the car's subsystems worked together to form the system, but fascinating regardless.
Concepts
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Reflection
This project taught me a lot. I learned how to use a Gantt chart and how various objects and their systems work. My favorite part of this project was that we were able to choose an item and learn all about it. I thought that this project went pretty well for it being the first. Somethings I did well were staying on task and communicating. Our whole group was on task. We stayed on schedule with our Gantt chart for the majority of the project. Also I communicated with my group to ensue we completed all the tasks and to check in when someone was absent. I could have improved my persistence in trying to find information. A lot of the information on the materials was difficult to find. I think I could have found more if I tried harder. The format of our presentation could also have been improved. If we labelled it by the steps of the reverse engineering process it could have been clearer. Another struggle in our project was that one of our group members was absent for half the project. It was hard because they had our conceptual sketch and car. From this I learned that we should have had multiple copies of our sketch and taken photos before making the presentation. This project was definitely a learning curve, but I am glad because now I am more prepared for future projects.