Three things I found most meaningful to me:

1. When Jobs mentions how he would take abnormal classes that struck his interest, an later they became a huge part of what made a Macintosh a Macintosh. This really showed me that doing what is interesting can often be more helpful that doing what is required. so in short, feed your imagination.

2. When he talks about getting fired from his own company, I remembered a quote from Harry Potter. Dumbledore says "happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the lights." This is similar in meaning. Jobs had lost everything he had worked for. Just by turning on the light, and bringing about new ideas, he was able to make yet another revolutionary company and find a wife.

3. the live each day as if it were your last is an old quote, and yet maybe one of the most wise. We never know when we will die; guessing is futile. I cannot put into words what it means to me. 

Energy Sources

The Deep DIve

1. “From the buildings in which we live and work, to the cars we drive, or the knives and forks with which we eat, everything we use was designed to create some sort of marriage between Form and Function.”

2. The folks at IDEO state that they are not experts in any given area. But, they do claim to be experts on the __Procces of how to define stuff___, which they apply to the innovation of consumer products.
3. After the team of designers is brought together, told the problem, and informed they have five days to “pull it off,” what phase of the design process do they immediately engage in?

• Brainstorm
• give useful comments.
• Come up with ideas

4. Give two examples of what the team members did during this phase.

a.Give info and facts about the problem.
b.Brainstorm, and work as a team(teamwork)


5. List five rules-of-thumb that IDEO employees follow when they share ideas during the brainstorming phase:

a.One conversation at the time
b.Stay focused on topic
c.Encourage wild ideas
d.Defer judgement
e.Build on the ideas of others


6. Why should wild (and sometimes crazy) ideas be entertained during the brainstorming phase?

•  Because out of wild ideas, they come up with brilliant ideas.
• And if there were only normal ideas, they wouldn't be able to do something cool or extraordinary.

7. After the brainstorming phase was over, the team narrowed down the hundreds of ideas by _____voting_____ for those ideas that were not only “cool” but also _buildable_____ in a short period of time.
What phase of the design process is this called?
Enlightenment trial and error.

8. IDEO believes that the ideas and efforts of a ___team___ will always be more successful than the planning of a lone genius.

9. Once the ideas were narrowed down and divided into categories, the group was split into four smaller teams. What phase(s) of the design process was each of these groups responsible for?

·  Shopping

·  Safety

·  Checkout

·  Finding stuff you need

10. The leaders at IDEO believe that  _a playful __ behavior and a ___fun____ environment are two important reasons why their employees are able to think quickly and creatively to produce innovative results.

11. Sometimes, people come up with great solutions that work by trying their ideas first, and asking for _____opinion____________ later.

12. Design is often a process of going too far and having to take a few steps back. What phase of the design process would the critique of the four mock-ups come under?
re-finding and communicating results

13. Upon critique of the four teams’ models, it was obvious that none of the teams had developed an optimum solution. However, the people at IDEO believe that it is important to ____fail_________ often in order to ___succed__________ sooner.

14. What percentage of the entire week’s time did it take to fabricate the final prototype?

1 day - 20%

15. Instead of showering his design team with a tremendous amount of praise, what did the boss require his employees to do with their new design?
Improve on there design


16. Of all the things that we are surrounded by every day, what has not been placed through the design process?

• human body
• nature

Conclusion

1. What did you find to be the most impressive part of the team’s effort?

·   Everyone worked as a team an had fun while doing it.

·  No one criticized ideas.

·  The final product looked cool was effective and very successfully.

2. What advantages are there to having a design team with members that have non-engineering backgrounds?

·  Crazier ideas.

·  Ideas engineer wouldn't come up with.

·  Provide more info. from each person from a different field
3. There was a point in the process where a self-appointed group of adults stepped up, stopped the ideas, and redirected the group to break up into teams. Why was this done?

·  So they could get more ideas in a faster range of time.


4. At the end of the video, Dave Kelly states, “Look around. The only things that are not designed are the things we find in nature.” Can you think of anything that would contradict this statement?

·  No, because everything is done by thinking, even minor things. Only nature is not engineered.

Card Board Canoe

 The last two weeks have been filled with duct tape, and cardboard. Our groups were faced with the challenge of floating a cardboard boat strong enough to carry someone.

Our boat had a square stern and a pointed bow, along with with a flat hull. We used one large sheet to form the hull, then taped several boxes to the sides to raise her gunnels .

This is Joe and me adding the side wall to our cardboard boat.

After we had completed the cardboard part of the hull, we gave her an entire outter shell of duct tape, then taped a few extra loose layers on the inside the hull to add support and keep the deck from buckling. Finally, this beast was ready to hit the water.

Though, technically first contest was to see who can go the furthest and the fastest, the real challenge was to place the craft in the water without scraping her, or damaging the hull. Our ship (the USS HMD) was by far the fastest. We all were surprised as to how our boat sat on top of the water; the water level seemed to only rise up about an inch on the gunnels of the boat even with Kingston inside it. We had previously predicted for the water to raise to the range of six inches to a foot.

We put Kingston inside and had our three polo players

push us to victory in the distance competition

This video shows the speed and prowess of our watercraft

We dominated the race, and our prowess was shown. But when we pulled our beauty out of the water, we resized that was soon to change in the unexpected later contests. 

Below is a picture of the blindfolded challenge; our team had to place one man in our boat and the rest of the team had to direct them verbally to help them collect kickboards placed throughout the pool. unfortunately, it was decided that our team was not allowed our former form of motorization. In the race, we had three of us push our ship. Now the rider had to paddle with his hands. 

   

We directed Joe the best we could, but failed to pull another victory.

 However our cardboard vessel was falling apart; the blindfolded challenge was a disgrace, however, we had done so well in the previous challenges, I think we are still up there at the top.

All good things come to an end

Design Achievements:

• Define the Problem and Brainstorm Solutions - We need to cross the swimming pool using only cardboard and duct tape. To tackle this problem we have gathered ideas from actual ships and boats. We have decided to use a boston whaler type design, with a pointed front and a flat bottom, sides and back. To test this out we first created a mini boat out of regular paper and our small prototype worked out so we continued onto the full scale version. 
• Big Brain - Cover all sides with duct tape, copy the design of actual boats, use a big surface area for better bouancy, and create thick sidewalls to keep the boat strong. 
• Criteria & Constraints - The one implied criteria is that the boat must float. Implied constraints are that we can only use cardboard and duct tape, we must cover all sides to prevent clogging the pool filters, and the cardboard must meet the quality standard so it doesn't fall apart in the pool. 
• Sketch Ideas 
• Prototype Ideas - Craft physical prototypes (models) of each of your three sketches. Use a notecard or post it note to call out at least one key feature on each model. Post the images to your blog and describe the key feature that you've pointed out on each.
• Select an Approach - Generate feedback (+, change, ?, !) and make a decision matrix regarding your sketches/prototypes. Specify the approach you've chosen and justify your selection.


Build Achievements:
• Build It!
• The Early Bird Gets the Achievement - Awarded to the team with the fastest build.
• V-Bottom - Earn this by building a non-flat bottom


Test Achievements:
• The Fastest - Awarded to the first team to reach the far side (25yds)
• The Farthest - Awarded to the team that can travel the furthest (laps)
• The Longest - Awarded to the team with the watercraft that floats the longest (multiple teams may be awarded this achievement if multiple boats remain afloat at the end of our competition period).
• Balance Master - Awarded if you can have at least one person stand for 5 seconds in the boat (you must conduct this away from the edge of the pool so that non one falls over and hits their head)
• Videographer - Take video of the challenge and post to your blog.


Reflection Achievements:
• Feedback - Generate ten items of feedback for your effort (from the design/build process and/or the actual product). Make sure you include at least one item of feedaback in each of our four feedback areas (+, change, ?, !)
• How Low Did You Go? - How low in the water did your canoe sit (roughly)? Was it suprising how little your boat went down in the water? What is the unit weight of water in pounds? How much did your pilot weigh (roughly)? Use math to help explain the depth that your boat sat in the water.
• Redesign - If we were to do another Carboard Canoe race next semester, what would you build? Draw from everything you experienced in your class and propose the most competative solution. Include a sketch with key features and dimensions labeled.
• (Make Your Own Achievement) - Make an achievement of your own design that you can award yourself for something awesome your team did. (Example "Transformer" - although our canoe sunk, our team was able to convert it into a surfboard style design and continue competeting!)
- Build your watercraft. Document it with a presentable photo.- Draw 3 different sketches for possible designs. Label at least 3 key features for each sketch. Describe the feature's functionality so a viewer understands why the called out feature is important.

Mousetrap Race cars

This week, we were faced with the challange of building a vehical powered by a mousetrap. I teamed up with Jason Vance (iliketobuildstuff.blogspot.com) and we built a super sick car that should have won, but due to unforeseen "technical difficulties" (aka gremlins) it ended in the contrary. However, unlike most of the other cars, we put the mouse trap on the car. Then we connecting the trap to a string that we wrapped around one of our axels. When the mouse trap snapped back, it spun the axel, henceforth moving the car. 

for future races, I made some new rules:

Proposed rules:

1)must be at least 8 ounces

2)moustrap must be attached to car

Trials:

During our first trial our car was able to travel a super awesome total of 15'5'. This was our best trial, since our other two trials didn't even make it past the five foot marker due to malfunctions/deamons thwarting the intellectual progress of mankind.

Achievements: 13/15

Earned:"Brainiac," "Visualize It!," "Build It," "The Price of Glory," "Competitor," "Going the Mile!,"  "Heavy Foot," "Feedback," "Re-work," "Game Changer," "Name it," "Leave It Cleaner Than You Found It," "Design/Build"

Failed:

"Long Distance Winner!," "Led Foot,"

Emergency Preparedness

List of stuff to store in an easy access in case of and emergency:

compact first aid kit

food(non-perishable, ex. canned goods)

flash lights

batteries

radio(hand crank)

water

insurance

chargers (phone, computer, ect.)

Spare car battery

masks(breathing)

pack of playing cards

spring powered-watch (one without batteries)

back pack

cross & bible (if religious)

saw

pocket knife

hand gun + extra amunition

what Criteria (rules) would you add to the Mousetrap Racecar Challenge to help "level" the playing field?:
Mouse trap has to be on the car
No more than one mouse trap per car
must weigh more than 5 ounces

My First Post!

Tis my first post. My name is Putnam (yes, that really is my first name) Browne (the "e" is silent). I am a Junior at Coronado High School. I play water polo and enjoy walking my dog on cool 'nado nights. I also like to take pictures and use photoshop. In the morning, I like to start the day with a strong cup of coffee and huge bowl of cereal and fruit. This is a link to a site on how to use a french press...probably man's greatest creation. Throughout my life, I have moved many times around the country. So chances are, if my name sounds familiar you probably know me. This year I signed up for Mr. Olson's Principals of Engineering class. So far, it looks like this class is going to be a blast!