So last year we did this thing called Destination Imagination (D.I) and this year we did it again because it’s a yearly thing that PLP students do. DI is basically a thing where your in a team with a few other people and you have to decide on one out of a few challenges that you have to try and complete (I was in a team with Owen, Logan, Luca J., and Isabelle). All of them have some sort of performance that you need to present but they all have some other thing that you need to integrate into your presentation. We chose to do the engineering challenge called Drope Zone. Here is a quick video that the people at DI made to explain our chalenge:

So basically to summarize that video we need to make a performance that integrates a structure made with specific materials into it. The structure also need to withstand weights being dropped on it. We also have to make an event depicter that visibly or audibly shows the sudden event in our story.

So for the story we decided have there be an earthquake every time a weight was dropped because it made kinda made sense and because that would mean we could make the event depicter a seismograph. then building off of the we decided to have a scientist who is studying earthquakes to be using the structure to test the effects of earthquakes wile using the seismograph to sea how powerful the earthquakes were. then we decided to have him test the effects of earthquakes on some test subjects that we decide to call The Droplets (which also happens to be our team name). The Droplets would be in a different dimension to make sure the scientist wouldn’t have to make earthquakes in the real world. then since we had one person left we decide to have the scientist record a video of his finding and those findings being shown in a class by a teacher.

So with story figured out it was time to get stated on all the things we needed to make. We decide to split up the stuff evenly between us, Owen worked on the structure, I worked on the event depicter, Logan helped me and Owen and research, and Luca and Isy worked on all the props, the costumes and the backdrop. What we decide to do for the structure was make a sort of skeleton of a box. We pretty much had 4 verticle wood pillars in a scare shape, then we connected them at the top and bottom the the pillars beside them with horizontal pieces of wood. But we decide that we could make it stronger so we put some more vertical pieces in between the horizontal pieces at a bit of an angle. here’s what it looked like in the device used to drop weights on it:

Then for the event depicter we took inspiration from the picture below and came up with a plan for ours but we had to figure out how to make the arm wave on command, so what we did was take on of my Lego motor and connect it to a Lego infra red sensor that was connected to a Lego battery pack, then we could use the Lego remote that sent out infra red light to the sensor to control the motor.

Then to use the motor to make the arm shake we just had to put some thing lopsided on it and make it turn fast. So with that sorted I made a design for it (which you can see below).

Then me and my dad went to a hardware store and got the materials we needed to build it. but after trying to get the pieces of the cylinder to stick together and not having a motor to turn the cylinder we decided that it would be easier to make a different design. We took inspiration from the picture below and got to work.

First we decide on all the lengths for all the parts of the arm then took some 2×4 (which is annoyingly actually 1 and a half by 3 and a half) and cut some pieces of the right length, then put the arm together and then screwed it to the base. then we put a hook at the end of the arm, attached some string to it then put the motor on the side of the arm with a sort of paddle to whack the top of the string with. then put the battery pack and the infra red sensor on top of the arm. her is a video of what it looks like:

For the back drop we made a sort of painting canvas that can fold in half which Luca and Isy painted on. One half was the scientists lad and the other half was the droplets dimension. we also all got costumes. Logan was the scientist so he got a lab coat and some goggles, all the droplets got different colored t-shirts and hats, and Owen who was the teacher got a dress shirt and some black pants. Then for the props we had a bag with some dolls in it that turn into the Droplets, we had some small trees and mushrooms that stood up by them selves, and we had a book that the scientist recorded all his findings in.

Now it was time for the presentation. there are multiple tournaments where everyone competes, the first one of which was the regional tournament. our presentation went really well, except for the fact the we ran out of time at the end but Owen was saying his closing lines when it happened so none of the story was cut off. Here’s a video of our performance:

We actually ended up getting first in our level for our challenge was was really nice although the regional tournament doesn’t matter as much as the provincial tournament, which is where we’re going next!