It's Time to Declare Those Projects

The week leading up to winter break and this first week back have been spent preparing for the Expression Phase of the By Land Arc. We spent time brainstorming project ideas and the routes to take to complete them. We worked together to create a declaration for our 'Brightworks on a Bus' (BOAB) band project. We talked about how the declaration is just as important as the final product.For the next five weeks, the Teal Band will be working on an incredible collection of projects. Here is a sneak peek into what they will be working on.Selina, Aurora, and Nora's project introduction:We find it really interesting how ancient civilizations, with their limited supplies and technology, managed to create their own modes of travel and use them to trade and thrive. Even today, people are thinking of new ways of transportation, because without transportation, we couldn't trade or expand our cities and civilizations. Transportation allows growth, and in ancient times, it was a necessity. For our project, we want to each create our own civilization in three very different terrains, and experiment with different forms of transportation that would best suit our different landscapes. After we come up with a few different forms of transportation, we want to design them in GoogleSketchUpp and create to-scale models. While we are doing this, we will make maps of our civilizations and the civilizations we created will be trading with each other. We will also research what sort of resources there are in our landscapes, and build our civilization off of those. Every day each civilization will gain a certain amount of resources that they can use or trade. Our final product will be to-scale models of three different forms of transportation and maps of our civilizations.Patrick and Jared's proposed project introduction: We are hoping to build an RC car. Now, the real question is will you let us?  Jared wanted to build a remote control car and Patrick wanted to help him through the first real project arc of the year. We decided to build an RC car first because we thought that we should take baby steps until we make a bigger version which you could ride in. Also, it would help both of us learn multiple things and become better friends along the way. Piper's proposed project introduction:How does Slide Ranch get yarn to us? I would make a map to show how it would travel from being on a sheep to nice yarn that can be used and sold. I want to do this project because I love using yarn, and I want to know how it gets to me.Freddie's project introduction:I, Fredrica Lipsett would like to propose my by land arc project where I study the migration patterns of urban coyotes and create a map showing their general locations. We have many urban coyotes in the Bay Area and I have always wondered, "How did they get here?" So, for my project I would like to learn why they have migrated here over the last number of years. I would also like learn about their habitat and how people track them. I'm interested because at Bernal Hill (where I live) there is a coyote living there and I am intrigued about how it got there. We have 70 Coyotes in San Francisco but no one knows if they came as a pack or if they came from different places in California and beyond.Huxley's proposed project introduction:Dispelling fear of Maglev technology/electrodynamic suspension.A Maglev is a high-speed train that uses repelling magnetic fields to levitate. The lack of friction allows Maglevs to achieve speeds of 603 km/h, while using only around half the energy a normal bullet train needs.The Maglev is far more efficient, less polluting, and much faster than any other type of train, so why aren't we seeing them everywhere?Because most humans are afraid of the unknown, and therefore afraid of change. Protests have been set up because some people believe that they will be bombarded with harmful radioactivity from the Maglev. No scientific research supports this, and yet the protesters still believe, because they are afraid of the unknown, and new emerging technologies are classified as unknown. The same scenario is happening with self-driving cars, and has happened with smartphones.In order for Maglev to become a reality, we need to dispel this fear. To do this, I propose that we make an RC toy, using Maglev technology.How it works:If a spinning magnetic field is placed on top of a conductive non-magnetic material, such as copper in the form of sheet metal, It will create eddy currents in the metal. Following Lenz's law,The direction of current induced in a conductor by a changing magnetic field due to faraday's law of induction will be such that it will create a field that opposes the change that produced it.The eddy currents will create a magnetic field that opposes the magnetic field that created it. A series of electromagnets in a ring, pulsing at specific times, could create this spinning magnetic field. If provided enough energy, this should keep a small vehicle aloft. Other rings of electromagnets on the sides of the vehicle could be pulsed in order to steer.