The Aquatotter is Over!

School Year is Long Over and I finally have time to post things, from all of my projects. The main focus of this post is the Aquatotter. Long Story short. We floated!!!! Despite the fact, we had no deck to speak of and broom as oars, we did it. I made a short movie describing the process, and I'll add the pictures of us underneath it.

The Construction
We got off to a rocky start. Our original material for construction was bamboo. I had visions of 1 1/2" diameter bamboo rods tied together and holding the bottles and keeping us afloat. Unfortunately, our bamboo suppply was less than adequate, so we had to supply the other team with money to secure wood and additional supplies, in order to construct it. This process is detailed a bit in the slide show.
The Bottles
Our primary flotation objects, we needed a lot to support our weight. Many other teams used tires, or floaters, but we stuck with the bottles. Collecting them all was one of the hardest parts of this assignment and figuring out how many we would need was also an issue. Since we had more than one kind of bottle, I had to find out how much each bottle type would carry, then count each bottle type. I will be including these calculations on a different post. I'll just say that i doubled the amount we would need to float, because we want to be above the water, not on the surface of the water.
Here's the Poster we used to raise awareness.

The other teams craft did technically float, but due to the narrowness of the craft, kept wobbling from side to side until it eventually, tilted over.

Here is the video made by my group member TC, for our final presentation.

We succeeded, despite great difficulties, and most important of all, we floated!!!

The Aquatotter is Coming........

So this will be the beginning of my first Project Series. The name of this project is the Aquatotter, and I will put the project guidelines in my next post. It is generally a floating boat/raft/thingy that is supposed to be able to float on the water, exchange crews, and go back to the dock. We are supposed to use mainly Reclaimed materials, like plastic bottles, cardboard, found wood, or anything generally that we didn't pay for. I think this is going to be a fun project, and I'm bursting at the seams with ideas already. Here's a link to previous year's Aquatotter adventures. 

The first portion of the project, the anchor has been completed, and I shall have pictures up of the final thing in a couple of days. It went pretty well, and I believe our anchor fulfills all of the criteria established by the professor. Here are pictures of the original design which contained the initials of all the people who were in our group at the time. For the record, my group currently consists of RM (me), TC, RB, and EC. Since TC was a later addition to our group his initials didn't get on the anchor, but he helped with the lab report, so it's all good.

I did the anchor design in Google Sketchup. The anchor came out a bit rounded on the sides because of expansion, but otherwise came out as designed. We added fabric in between the layers of concrete for reinforcement, and a chain was added to pull it up by. There is also a hole in the center in case the chain breaks. Yellow and Red paint were used as colorant as well as red yarn. We emptied the whole bottle of yellow paint and the cement was eating it like m&ms but it showed up in the end, ditto with the red. 

The R, with the chain coming out for securing and hoisting the anchor. There's also the hole in the center in case the chain breaks.

One of my group members giving an idea of scale. 

The black stuff is the fabric reinforcement that we used. We were happy that we saw some color differentiation at the end of the day, because the cement was straight gray last time we saw it. You can see bits of the red and yellow paints we put in there.

The E/M & C, which came out pretty well considering that part of the E/M support collapsed while we were putting the cement in. More color visibility from this side.

Finally the B shape, where you can see the red yarn we put in. It turned out looking like red veins, which was an unexpected bonus. 

So all in all, our anchor was a success. Its definitely heavy enough for the project requirements, the color is visible and we have 2 things to secure it with (the chain and the hole) when we get out on the water. And its light enough for one person to carry. Here's one of my group members describing our anchor.

I went to Ben Franklin's Art Supply mentioned in my earlier blog to grab some supplies for the coming project. It was a short trip, I only bought wax candles for sealing the plastic bottles we are collecting and some sketch paper for a different project. I went to 7 eleven afterward to get a pack of matches. You can get a whole lot for $1.19. My next post will be about the plastic bottles and the sealing process. Stay tuned.