The project this time was to design a safer bajaj, which means that we were supposed to create something that would go down a zipline quickly and would be safe enough that two ping pong balls inside of it wouldn’t fall out when it collided with a wall. However, because it was being judged on speed and not on practicality as a bajaj, Kenny and I focused on speed and not on making it look like a real street vehicle.

To start with, we just put the ping pong balls in a red solo cup with string taped to the top with a paperclip to attach it to the zipline. Then we just started adding weight by taping three cups of buttons and paperclips onto the bottom of it. This made it very tall and relatively heavy. But to get it to actually slide down the zipline, we had to modify our hook, as the rubberized paperclip that we had didn’t work. We just added tape to it so it would slide and it worked perfectly, winning us the first round.

Then we were able to go and revamp our design using more than just the low-fidelity prototyping materials. Kenny and I decided to mimic our original design, focusing on just making our cup very heavy. To do this, we used some of the heaviest things we could find – dead batteries from the bin by the machine shop. We taped 4 large batteries together with a AA battery in the center to keep them from wiggling, then stacked three of these  together and taped them to the bottom of our red solo cup in place of the cups of buttons. We  kept one of our cups of buttons on the bottom mostly for posterity. We also used much thicker string to support the hook and a carabiner , which was able to support the weight of our bajaj much better than a paper clip. We also covered it in folded felt to make it prettier and less of a battering ram.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we were preparing to race our bajaj, we added a lance made of chopsticks to the front, mostly just for fun, but partially because it might touch the wall sooner and lower our time. But because it spun to the side on the first trial and did nothing (and because it seemed like a safety hazard), we just removed it for the second trial. The biggest problem with the trials was that our bajaj was just too tall and heavy – it dragged the zipline down a lot, and because of that, it brushed the ground and slowed it down.

If I had to redesign it again, I probably wouldn’t make it lighter unless it was one of the rules, but I would definitely want to make it look more like an actual car, meaning I’d want to distribute the weight around the cup instead of under it. It seems to me like the challenge should include design, not just speed, because as it is, it’s hardly even a bajaj challenge – it’s more of just a zipline challenge with a bajaj-themed story. But this challenge was still a ton of fun and I definitely wouldn’t mind doing it again.