This week, I’m documenting our work collaborating with the Moody Center Creativity Up Close class on the Bajaj Challenge. The challenge was to create a “vehicle” that could safely and quickly transport passengers down a zip-line. Here, our passengers were two ping pong balls. I worked with Amelia Brumwell, also from our class, to make a design that was ultimately pretty successful in this challenge.
From the get-go, Amelia and I decided that apart from keeping the ping-pong balls in the vehicle, our design should focus in two main areas:
- Be as heavy as possible
- Have a frictionless attachment to the zipline
The first week, our focus was mostly on #1. We found a Solo cup that served as the chassis for the car. Its depth meant that the balls would not fall out. To weigh the car down, we sourced the heaviest supplies in the room and attached them to the bottom of the Bajaj inside other solo cups, which we attached on the underside with tape. For attaching to the zipline, we used a rubber paper clip on some string on the top of the cup. This had too much friction with the line, so we added some tape to it before our second launch which worked flawlessly. Our bajaj had the fastest time in week 1!
Going into week 2, we had the same two goals. Heavier and less friction. Working at the OEDK, we had access to better supplies. We found a bucket of dead batteries, which we took full advantage of. We made 3 “battery packs” (4 attached dead D batteries), which we attached to the bottom of our Solo Cup chassis. This was much heavier and less voluminous that the buttons. A picture of a battery pack is below.
For our attachment mechanism, we found a carabiner at the OEDK. This had many desirable properties. The sliding surface was made of metal and had a wide rounded edge. This was attached to the top of the cup with tape and string. Worried for the safety of the Moody Center and our heavy design, we also covered the bajaj in felt to soften the blow. A picture of our final design is below.
This design worked even better than our first. Unfortunately, other teams caught on to the “heavy” design after Week 1, so our design only won 2nd place in the Week 2 competition.
Overall this was a fun project that tested out abilities with quick prototyping and figuring out what the most important criteria are to focus on when faced with a time constraint.
