Group 4 project

Yesterday was 'Group four project day'.

Group four refers to the science part of the IB requirements and the project is part of the internal assessment portion of our marks along with lab write-ups.
Everyone who takes an IB science must engage in a ten hour (I think) group project that they design themselves.
At my school we do it all in one day.

The projects were done in house groups, and so at 8 in the morning we all headed down to the biology department to meet with Adrian, our group four day teacher.

After brain storming ideas for a while, my house eventually split into two groups.
A little more than half the house headed down to the outdoor pool, where they split into a further two groups and had a competition to see who could create the best boat using only recycled materials.
The other ten people (including yours truly) returned to our house where we had plans to see 'What are the most amount of steps we can have to push a cake into the oven?' in the style of Rube Goldberg.
We combed the house looking for everyday objects that could be used: our clothing line and a coat hanger became a zip line, a wooden Easter egg became part of a pulley system, and books became dominoes.
We worked for most of the day trying new ideas, setting the system up over and over again and searching for new materials.
There was a time when we had two different reactions happening, but unfortunately even though we were full of creative ideas, we couldn't make them all work just right.

In the end our day room was covered in string and books, cardboard and tape.
Our couches were shoved to the side, our foosball table was in the opposite corner and our kitchen has been rendered unusable.
But we had a working Goldberg machine.
It started with the release of a weighted pulley, which cause a foosball player to spin, dropping a rock and then it was off!
Strings were pulled, books toppled and clothespins were unclipped.
Fortunately I was able to capture it working successfully on my camera (it is rather blurry because my camera is slow to focus, but it is there nevertheless).
Unfortunately due to my laptop breaking, I can't upload the video or any of the photos.

After our machine put the cake in the oven we followed the rest of the house down to the pool where they had a relay in their boats.
One boat sunk before it reached the other side.
The other boat made it back a forth with its entire team and would have remained dry... except it was tipped by the losing team.
My group sat on the side of the pool and cheered.
And then, nice and dry, returned to our house to eat our cake.

Success!

The other houses: built a swing and a path, constructed a trebuchet, made soap and investigated the uses of nettles, amongst other things.

Personally I think my group had the best project because we got to dance to music while in our house and had a cake at the end of it all.