Written By: Jamie F + Owen H (Whimsy) and Siri S + Gabe B (Purple)
Team Whimsy
It’s a Sign! – Monday
Monday was the first day of week 2 for Minnetrails. Today, we cut our bellypan, which is a traffic sign, as well as CADed some mechanisms we might use. On top of this, there was also a Media meeting that introduced a revamp of Talon’s poster board and new subteam agreements. We’re excited to see what comes of it.
Bellypan Work and Meetings! – Wednesday
On Wednesday, we cut out inserts in our bellypan where our gearboxes are, and we continued to CAD mechanisms that we might use. We also had an inclusivity meeting, where we discussed ways to make our room more Inclusive and Accessible. Also, we had a sponsorship meeting where we reached out to some contacts we got from Harvest to Halloween and the IEEE WIELS.
Having Some Fun! – Friday
On Friday, we drilled into our belly pan to be able to mount it to our drivetrain. The room was closed early because some of our members were going to perform at an orchestra concert, so some of our other members went to support them. Here is one of our deputies, Rishi, in his milk costume.
Bonus: Fun Friday Top 10 Halloween Costumes
- Beetlejuice
- Wednesday Addams
- Labubu
- Literally any Wicked character
- Steve from Minecraft
- Ghostface from Scream
- Spiderman
- Michael Meyers
- Luigi from Super Mario Bros
- Darth Vader
Team Purple
CAD! – Monday
What did the engineering deputy say to his minnetrials team when he checked onshape? “Y’all are lowkey cooked”
Monday was mainly CAD! It’s really helpful to have a full blueprint of your robot before you build it, so we’ve been prioritizing our CAD work so we can make the building process as smooth as possible. By the end, we finished our master sketches for the funnel and shooter of our bot!
For this year’s game, we’re going to need our shooting mechanism to be able to launch tennis balls. Naturally, the best way to test our prototype was to launch 6 of them per second towards our teammates! They will be remembered fondly.
We still needed to finish our intake CAD and sketches for the rest of the robot before we could build, so we planned to finish those by the end of the week.
Monday only had one meeting: Media! We added to our subteam agreements, started work on updating our poster board that we use at outreach events, and got people to write blog posts for the week (like us). Most importantly, we learned that doing sketchy software stuff on school computers = bad.
You Guessed It, More CAD! – Wednesday
We need to fish for attention grabbers, so here’s a hook (if you’d so kindly take the bait).
We were still really prioritizing CAD at this point, just like Monday. The intake and funnel were still works in progress, but we got a lot of the base done and even finished our drivetrain!
On a side note, we got clicker counters to track attendance! In addition to counting well, they also made these lovely clicking noises. This resulted in them being used as fidgets for the entirety of open room (my personal high was 9999).
Our plan by the end of the day was pretty simple: Finish the CAD and start building our robot!
Wednesday had two meetings! At Inclusivity, we fleshed out some of the details for our annual Women’s Panel, started planning an event with a local Girl Scouts troop, and discussed how to make room more accessible/inclusive for those with disabilities! At Sponsorships, we reached out to contacts that we’ve gotten from recent events, like Harvest to Halloween and IEEE’s Women in Engineering Leadership Summit.
Overall, today was a success!
Concert Break! – Friday
Due to a concert, not much happened in room on Friday! A few of our members were playing in the orchestra, and they did great. Since it’s almost Halloween, everyone was dressed up in costumes during the show! Here’s Rishi (Team Purple’s deputy) in his signature milk costume:
Bonus: Fun Friday Aquatic Creatures
Since there aren’t really any new updates, here’s a list of my favorite aquatic creatures in no particular order:
- Yeti Crabs: Yeti crabs live on the ocean floor, right by hydrothermal vents! They have long arms with fur-like bristles, which collect and grow bacteria for the crab to eat. It’s like a little self-sustaining farm.
- Great White Sharks: These guys are one of the biggest species of sharks, and also one of the longest living! They can live past 70 years old. Unlike most other fish, these sharks are warm-blooded. It allows them to survive in deeper, cooler waters.
- Sperm Whales: This toothed whale is the largest of its kind, and one of the deepest diving as well. It can get all the way down to the midnight zone of the ocean, which is where it hunts prey, especially giant squid (which are usually the cause of the scars you see on the whales). We’ve never actually seen the two creatures fight, as the pressure is so strong that we can only explore here through slower, remote methods. Sperm whales are also the loudest creatures on the planet, producing calls that reach 230 decibels! On land, a noise like that could actually cause death which is very cool.
- Remoras: This type of fish basically has a giant sucker cup on its head! It uses this to attach to larger aquatic creatures, but it has also been known to attach to boats and divers. The remoras get free transport from this, and also free food! They feed on parasites and leftovers found on their host. For example, a remora will swim inside of a shark’s mouth to eat materials on the teeth, and the shark doesn’t eat the remora because getting its teeth cleaned is a good thing.
- Octopi: I don’t know enough about octopuses to have a favorite one, but all of them are so cool. They have three hearts to pump their blood, with one of them actually stopping when the octopus swims in order to conserve energy. Speaking of blood, an octopus’s blood is blue due to them having a protein called hemocyanin instead of hemoglobin! They’re one of the smartest creatures in the ocean and also one of the greatest multitaskers due to all of the neurons they have and how they’re allocated. About two-thirds of neurons are located in the tentacles, which allows them to complete separate tasks while the rest of the octopus is doing something else!
- Pufferfish: Pufferfish are the ones that can inflate into a ball several times their normal size! This and the spikes that cover their body make them look a lot less tasty to predators. Another thing that makes them less tasty is the incredibly poisonous toxin they produce!
- (an honorable mention to frogs, who are sadly only semi-aquatic)
- Ferris: Ferris is my favorite aquatic creature (as well as the rest of the team’s). He’s the mascot for Rust, which is the programming language we use. Last year, one of our mentors crocheted him into existence, and he’s been loved by all ever since. We made sure to drip Ferris out throughout the season, so he’s a crab of swag.
Stay Connected With Us During The Entire Season!
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