do it better / cardboard chair
overview
For this final project, we were tasked to either redo a previous project to make a better, more efficient product, or we could build a cardboard chair to support a human. Myself, Noah Prochnow, Eric Cheng, and Leo Buoncristiani all were very intrigued by the idea of building a functioning chair out of cardboard, so we decided to choose this. However, we didn't just do a chair, we went all in and made a prototype for a cardboard futon. I think that it turned out quite well, and I'll get into more specifics on this later.
the futon
As I was saying, we made the futon completely out of cardboard, on a 1 to 4 scale. It was 1 ft long and could support up to 150 lbs. Unfortunately, it was a very short project, so we never had time to make the full product. We also made a silly commercial to sell our product to the masses. So here is the futon:
We also made rough blueprints to keep track of what we needed to make:
Here is the makeshift sill commercial as well that I put together:
concepts:
These concepts weren't much to do with physics, but here are different things that we had to consider while doing this project and here they are:
- Structural Stability: When thinking of this, we had to make sure that our futon was able to support human weight in the first place
- Aesthetics: This refers to how something looks, simply stated,if a product isn't appealing to the eye, then why would anyone buy it?
- On our full design we would add an "X" of cardboard in each cross section for more stability and durability
- Economics: Using cardboard is great as it uses recycled materials and is inexpensive
- Engineering Design Cycle: This is a nine step process used to create a product
- Identify the need
- Research the problem
- Develop the Solutions
- Select the most promising solution
- Construct a prototype
- Test and evaluate the prototype
- Communicate the design
- Redesign
- Repeat
reflection:
This was a pretty good project with a few highs and a few lows along the way. One peak was definitely time management. Although we weren't able to make a full scale model, we didn't expect to as we only had like five days-ish to work on it. We were able to accomplish all of our goals and more in the time limit. Another peak was simplicity. This may sound odd and poorly worded, as it probably is, but we were able to quickly come up with a simple, well-working futon and doing this was able to save us much time. One major pit was collaboration. Some group members were very stubborn about their ideas but wouldn't do the work to get them done in the first place. Another pit was being on task. Because of this stubbornness, others in the group would get mad and stop working. Throughout all of this however, we were still able to put out a product that I'm happy about.
I am going to greatly miss freshmen STEM as it has been one of my favorite classes of all time, and Mr. Williams was Great!!!
I am going to greatly miss freshmen STEM as it has been one of my favorite classes of all time, and Mr. Williams was Great!!!