Team Tringa

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                                      TEAM TRINGA BALL DROP PAGE

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Design Process

Before brainstorming a design, we realized that our ball drop device would need to give the tennis ball enough horizontal momentum for it to travel a significant distance from the base of the building. Our first design involved attaching the ball to a kite made of the plastic bag, dowels, and duct tape. We immediately dismissed this idea after realizing that we couldn't throw the kite off the building. Another potential design involved rolling the ball off a ramp made of the garage sale sign, the noodle, and duct tape. We hoped this would give the ball horizontal velocity, but we realized that the ramp would only slow the ball down. Our next design involved using a slingshot to shoot the ball down the ramp. The slingshot would give the ball a larger amount of momentum, and the ramp would give the ball direction. After experimenting with this design, we decided that the ramp was an ineffective use of materials.

Final Design

After much deliberation, we concluded that the most suitable design which included enough horizontal momentum and worked with the given materials was the slingshot device. We started by first making anchors out of the dowels and then wrapping them in duct tape to reinforce their structure. Next we positioned them so that the width between each dowel was slightly larger than that of the tennis ball. We experimented with which angles and which widths were most effective in providing maximum force. We then proceeded to test the device from different heights, the highest being the third floor from Willets. During the official ball drop, our ball launched 3.219 meters from the base of the building.

Final Result Summary

We launched our ball 3.215 meters from the base of the building.

Team Members

Christine Emery

Theo Noomah

Raundi Quevedo

Helen Thum

Seth Liebert

Casey Drubin

Shaina Lu