Wind Racers

 In Science, we are creating some land yachts. We are provided with a long, wooden, rectangular cart that was 3 wheels, 2 at the back and 1 at the front, and our task is to create a sail for the cart that will travel the furthest with a leaf blower. I am working on this project with Louise. There are 6 stages we should be following to create our sail: research, designing and planning, creating, testing, making modifications and lastly, the actual sail race.

We've been looking at boats and yachts, and analysing how the sails are positioned and designed. In the end, we chose the design of a galleon boat for our model/inspiration. We also briefly looked at the science behind air dynamics with the sail, even though it didn't exactly make sense to us. Our current plan is to have 2 masts (bamboo sticks) with 2 sails (newspaper) on each.

Here is a diagram of the plan we came up with:

Then we went onto creating our first prototype. 

The first thing we did was get the mast, which was the bamboo stick, and newspaper for the sails. We cut the newspaper in half and stabbed each half onto the mast. On the outer side of the newspaper on the mast, we added skewers to help prevent it from ripping off when the wind is applied. Next, we thought of a way to add the front mast on, so we ended up using popsicle sticks as a base and attached the second bamboo stick onto the base, then base onto the cart using string and sellotape. We repeated the first step with the second mast and added the newspaper sails. After that, we designed the flag and mascot then put it on the cart for the finishing details. I decided to name it 風, which is pronounced 'Ka-ze' since it's the Japanese word for wind. It was time to give 風 its first test run.

The first round, 風 didn't go that far, but since everyone got a chance to have a second turn, it went a lot further the second time. Now we got the chance to alter our design and prepare it for the final run on Tuesday (the following day). Since we weren't entirely sure about what we could change, we decided to cut a bit out of the back sails. That way, we hope that we can take advantage of having front sails and actually give the wind a chance to reach them. Another way we thought about altering is was to tape the end of the sails a little bit tighter, so the sails would be flatter.

We had another test round, and it went a lot further than it did the previous test run. So all we could do was wait and hope for a lucky gust of wind when we have the actual competition.

Since everyone had a day to improve their sails, everyone's wind racer went a lot further than the practise round we had. When we had our turn, Louise was the one who used the leaf blower (she's the one who also did it all the other times) and I sat to the side and hoped for the best. The first time, it didn't really go far, but at least it moved a couple of metres I think. While waiting for our second turn, we watched our other classmates have their turn, it was pretty intimidating. Their's were going a lot further than ours did, but I was still happy for them and cheered everyone. Honestly, the competition was fun and exciting, much like watching an actual race. You start to wonder how far each one will go, and when it stops, then continues to move a bit, that's when it's most exciting. When we had our second turn, the sail turned to the side and hit the wall of the classroom, but the teacher might have helped a little bit by turning it back so it was facing forward. 風 managed to go further the second attempt, compared to the first. Although 風 didn't come close to the top distances, I don't think that it came last either. Although I'm not so sure what place we came, it was probably close to something like second to last (´｡• ω •｡`)

Overall, I found this 'creating a Wind Racer' activity fun, and it was great to do something other than book work in science. If we were to redo it again, I would go for a single mast/sail and have it a lot flatter. Using cardboard also seems like a good idea, since it was a lot stronger than the newspaper itself. The winning model had cardboard added to their sails, and because of that, it was able to catch more of the wind and it went pretty far. There were different designs within the class, some had their mast/sail at the front, whereas others (such as us) had it at the back of the wind racer. even though our sail didn't do that well in the race, I was happy with the design and detail we came up with. Adding the flags was a good idea I think, Louise did a really good job with drawing a pirate flag, whereas I just printed out the kanji '風' because I couldn't trust my own handwriting :) I also really liked the lion mascot (who we named 'Sunny') at the front, since Louise drew it really cute and it added the finishing details.