Category Archives: Projects

General, Projects

Drink Driving Infographic

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This semester in health we had to create a campaign to attempt to make WA roads safer. Along with this we had to answer some reflection questions.

What were the biggest things you learnt while completing this task?  As a future driver, this task brought to my attention the many reckless young drivers that are ignorant to the law and even worse, don’t know the law. Furthermore The biggest thing I learnt while putting my infographic together were the insane statistics of young drink drivers, they make up majority of accidents in our road and contribute to completely unnecessary deaths every year. I also developed skills in making infographics. I learnt some new canva features to help make it look nicer. Really surprising statics was 20% of residents questions don’t even know the speed limit/speed laws in the area that they are driving in, it really puts into question how effective the driving program was and how it has improve to what it is now.  
What one piece of advice would you pass on to young drivers above all else? Why?  Be completely aware of the laws and follow them, especially drink driving. This piece of advice might be the most basic, enforced at such a young age however people, especially young drivers need to be aware of all the rules. As I said, 20% of fined WA residents don’t know that drink driving is even a felony. That is simply not enough people not knowing basic rules of driving while having their licence. What is worse is that if 20% don’t know what they are committing is that 80% do know that they are committing a crime. Simply pure ignorance to the law. I wanted to share this advice because they need to be aware of the consequence that follows the ignorance. If injuries and death does occur, it can ruin families, not only the victim but also the assailant. Families will lose money but more importantly lose someone they loved because people cannot make the right decision. If there is no death involved, it still puts people into financial debt and gives them can give them permanent injuries.  Gives struggling families hospital fees and even worse sets their family back.   All because of one bad decision  
Write down a pledge that you will commit to when you start driving. Why did you pick these things to commit to? How will you stick to these commitments?  At all times I will be completely aware of rules and laws while driving. In addition, when I’m older I will always be aware of my drinking status and make correct decisions based on the rules and laws.   I pick these things to commit to as they are the basic laws that will cover most scenarios. Since my infographic was on drink driving, I made sure to keep that as a focus. These things that I pick are simply questions that if you asked yourself, you can figure out if what your are doing is legal.   I will stick to these commitments by making informed decisions before I get into a car, not while I’m driving. Before I drive I’ll ask myself what rules do I need to be aware of. For example before I go out I ask myself If there is alcohol so I can make an informed decision to not drive to and from the location
Projects

Science Earthquake Task

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The Earthquake task was an assessment where students where presented with the task to create a building out of a limited amount of pasta and bluetac that can stay stable during a simulated earthquake. Apart from the 60 cm height limit and the $60 budget ($1 for 10cm pasta or 1g blue tac) the project was open to what we wanted to do which really put our teamwork and problem solving skills to the test, similar to an everyday engineer.

This was our initial design, it was extremely stable and sturdy making it seem like the design we were going to pursue however this is where we made our first key mistake, we misread the question. We thought it was $1 per pasta however midway through building we re-read the task sheet and saw that it was $1 per 10cm, making our design over $70 overbudget, we had to restart.

This was the annotated diagram of our new design. Based off research, we found that the triangle is the strongest shape because its capable of holding its own shape, has a strong base and is able to support itself so we built it primarily out of triangles in order to ensure we stay on budget and still have the strength and stability to survive an earthquake. After a couple lessons of designing and building, we have created our first prototype, only 76 cents over budget. It was time to test

Final design

https://allsaintswaedu-my.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/personal/l24auguj_allsaints_wa_edu_au/ET2pywNcAclLlNra8sgCeUABlXwlCHeC4EvShNCTTkPyyA?e=R67Xht

This video is an video of our prototype. The prototype was 65cm tall and 27cm wide. In the video you could see one pasta snapped as there was too much weight as the triangle was wide enough. The over usage of bluetac contributed to this weight.

Improvements we made:

1. During the building process we need to minimise mistakes in order to ensure there are not damages before the earthquake

2. Reduce blue tac use will not only make it lighter but make sure we are slightly under budget in case a problem arises

3. The triangle base in the middle of design needs to be bigger so that the very top has more to put the pressure on(10-15 cm)

Improvements to process:

  1. READING THE QUESTION, our mistake of not reading the question set us back a couple of hours as we continued with an over budget idea. Originally we though is was $1 per pasta(approximately 25cm in length) however it was $ per 10cm

2. During the start we were very off task as we believe we had plenty of time left, if we worked harder we might have been able to make a better design. We needed to set goals per lesson to make sure we are dividing the work evenly per lesson instead of cramming it all in the final lesson.

3.Do the stile task earlier and in more detail, the questions would have gotten us thinking about important aspects we haven’t considered. 

REFLECTION: ROLES

Within the group we had four main roles, the project manager (Aaron Ooi), Equiptment manager( Mischa), Reporter (Jayden) and the speaker (myself). Aaron role as the project manager had the role of making sure everyone has a deep understanding of their role and keeping the team on track, we chose him to be the project manager as he as good communication skills, Mischa with her organisation skills became the Equiptment manager, her role being making sure the Equiptment is prepared for the lessons aside. Jayden made sure the project was due on time and I had to seek help from other students and teachers.

REFLECTIONS: HOW WE USED OUR STRENGTHS

Roles aside we had to design, build, calculate and evaluate a building and we did these things depending on out strengths. After all off us had done extensive research, we found that triangles were the strongest shape and what we wanted to build it out off. I had a design in my head so I communicated my ideas with Aaron as he was very neat, detailed and a good drawer. With better mathematical skills, my role was to finalise dimensions and calculate a predicted cost for out building. Aaron and I attempted to build our design as we though we would know it the best however both of us were terrible at building and snapped the pasta strips and use more bluetac then we needed so we had Mischa and Jayden build the components as they were less shaky and more precise.

REFLECTIONS: HOW WE SOLVED PROBLEMS

As previously mentioned, the primary problem we ran to was misreading the task sheet making our original design over budget. With a double period to design, calculate and build a design, we had to work efficiently. I had thought of a design and with not much time left, Aaron would draw the design as we built it. Once we had a general idea of what it would look like I went to help Aaron with cost calculations. After all this, we were still 10 cm under the height limit so we had to put a couple pasta strips(not too many because it would be over budget) vertically up. Obviously it wasn’t very stable as the middle triangle was too small, something we needed to consider after we tested it. Luckily it was all very stable until the vertical point snapped off. Afterwards we made the improvements stated above and it all worked well.

Overall the engineering task has taught me many life skills. Outside of learning how to ‘build’ buildings but also researching skills, collaboration skills and communication skills. It was a project I definitely enjoyed and will keep the skills I have learnt for many years.