We went to the Moody Center and did the Bajaj challenge with another class that was there. For the Bajaj challenge, we had to create a “vehicle” that would go down a zip line as fast as possible without ejecting its passengers. The bajaj also had to be able to release the passengers if turned upside down though. For our challenge, our passengers were ping pong balls.

I wasn’t here for the first day that everyone did the bajaj challenge, so I joined another group who had already created a bajaj that worked quite well. It was a very clever design because it prevented the ping pong balls from being ejected forward because they would hit these two sticks that were stuck through a cup instead. However, when you turned it upside down, there was enough space for the ping pong balls to fall through. Their design consisted of a cup with the two sticks that I mentioned before which held the ping pong balls and then another cup which was full of rubber balls that acted as a weight to make the bajaj travel faster down the zipline. The weighted cup hung from string underneath the cup holding the ping pong balls.

I helped modify the design so that the connected between the weighted cup and the ping pong ball cup was stronger. We used connector pieces to secure them together instead of string which really helped stabilize it. We also taped fuzzy balls all around the weighted cup to give it shock absorbance, and we added sand to the weighted cup as well to give it more weight.

I wasn’t able to take pictures of the bajaj unfortunately, but below in Figure 1 is a sketch of what it looked like. In the actual bajaj testing, it did quite well, and it was pretty fun seeing all of the different bajaj designs that everyone came up with.

Figure 1: Sketch of Final Bajaj Design