Griffin+M

=//__** Wiki Entry 1- Electronics **__//= After reading a very intresting couple of pages about electronis I learned about signals, semiconductors and circuits. With signals I learned that analog signals are signals that run smothly going up and down. Digital signals do not run smothly instead they jump more like in your music if it just jumps one note down instead of doing all the notes before it untill it gets to the right one, this is how Digital and Analog signals are diffrent, it is good that we have both signals though because if everything was in analog it would be very boring and confusing to listen to music and without analog it would be very annoying to have to skip ten seconds of T.V. every second. I also learned about semiconductors, I always thought they didn't do much they were just like a metal execpt they didn't always conduct electricity but I learned that semiconductors are very important because they are used as switches which help turn on and off items when not in use. Next I learned about diodes, transistors and intergrated circuits work. Diodes are electrical componets that let electricity in only one way which allows the current to be directed. Transistors are used to amplify or block the transmisions or electrical current. Integrated circuits are used in such things as computers and are small chips that can be only 1mm in size but still hold millions of diodes, transistors and other electronic devices.

While in Space going to and searching for Mars life I believe that electronic will help us enormously. We will need computers to send emails and information back to earth. To have computers though we will need Integrated circuits. We will also want some sort of entertainment while we wait to get there so we will ned the analog and digital signals to watch T.V. and listen to music. We will need a little robot to go and check if it is safe to go outside the space craft and he will need semiconductors to help turn him on and off. If I am in space I would depend my life on Electronics.

=__ ﻿Wiki Entry 2- Rocket History __= The beggining of Rockets is believed to have started in around 100 B.C. with a Greek inventor named Hero. He created a sphere that had two tubes coming out of it. This sphere was a pipe that traveled down to a bowl of water with a fire underneath it. The fire would heat up the water and then the gas would go up the tube and into the sphere. the gas would then go out of the sphere and rotate the sphere



. The Chinese also used it on holidays such as the Chinese New Year. The first firework is said to be made by accident when a bamboo pole filled with gunpowder failed to explowed but was propelled by the gasses emited by the burning fire caused it. The Chinse then advanced it to make firework arrows. The arrow would be connected to a firework so that it would exploid. Even though it did not exploid it was more of a moral lowerer for the other side because it was much more superior weapons.



In the 20th century people the rocket was looked at for the first time in a long time. The rockets desings became more and more complex. Goddard was an inventor who thought that liquid would work better than solid fuel. His rockets flew much higher than anyone elses design on the rocket. He created a gyroscope system for rocket control and was able to drop stuff out of the air. Another big rocket achievment was the V-2 made by Germany during WW2. This rocket was small and was very fast if used at war this rocket if hit on the ground could devastate whole city blocks. Achievment after achievment came and came to the rockets and satelites then Sputnik was launched into space. The Russians launched Sputnik during the 1960s and it started the race to get into space. Today our rockets can go to the moon and back and orbit the earth.

=Rocket Stages= media type="custom" key="9018922"

=﻿Model Rocket Labels=



Mass and Altitude Experiment

We wanted to know if the weight of the rocket would affect the altitude of the rocket. So we made rockets and they were all the same until we painted it. Some people painted much less or much more so it was either more mass or less mass than the control. We then went outside and set up the launch pad. We then got a trundle wheel and measured 100 meters away. We would have somebody 100meters away with an angle gun and would measure the angle the rocket went up. When we had the angle and the mass of our rockets we would use trigonometry to determine the altitude using the tangent. We would multiply it by 100 because we were 100 meters away. Mine was 47.6 grams and had a 33 angle degress. Usint triganometry we determined that our rocket went up 64.9 meters. Our rocket was the most heavy and it went the lowest out of all the 9 rockets. My hypothesis was that the mass would affect the altitude and I was correct the more mass you got the less altitude you got.

=The Importance of Astronamy= I believe that if we are going to go find life on Mars we need to know about astronomy. We need to know about it because we need to know what dangerous particles are out there when we go farther out into the universe than the moon. We also need to know how the planets revolve around the sun so that we can plan to luanch our rocket so that there is less space to go and catch up to the fast moving planet. We need to know that because we can only have so much fuel so we need to know how fast Mars spins around the Sun and at what time to luanch our rocket. We also need to know about astronomy so that we can avoid asteroids and other such hazards and know where they are if we run into them. All these reasons are why I believe we need to know about astronamy.

=﻿To Read More About the Importance of Astronamy Click the Link Below= More about Astronomy

=﻿History of Robotics= In 350 BC a greek mathmatician Archytas created a robot bird that was propelled by steam, this is the first known robot in the world. For along time nothing much happened but in 1495 Leonardo Divinci made a robot looking knight that was used to amuse royalty and was the first walking machine. Then in 1770 Pierre Jaquet- Droz creates three dolls for royalty, the first one could write, the second could play music and the third one was able to draw pictures. 1921 was when the word robot was first used in a play called //Rossuum's Universal Robots// by Karel Capek. In 1961 Heinrich Ernst develops the MH-1, a mechanical hand. Then finnaly in 1962 a robotic arm is made to do dangerous jobs in General Motors' factory.

These inventors are the founding fathers of what we have today such as, computers and robots who play violens. We also have toys for children that drive around and say things. Robotics also helped create video game systems for intertainment. Robotics is used for intertainment and for jobs such as robotic arms creating cars. Without robotics the world would be a much diffrent place so luckily for us we have robotics and know the history of robotics so we can advance it more.



=﻿Robotics= In robotics you can program diffrent motors to turn so that they take the robot in diffrent directions at diffrent directions. We had a tribot, which means we had a three motor robot so you could program the robot to only turn one wheel and then it would turn. We had to make it go forward so you would program motors B and C to turn each so many rotations but since they both were programed the same amount it would go forward for that many rotations. In the picture below we had to make it go forward and then go faster, so it had to accelerate. The way you would do this is by making it go forward slowing by only putting the motors on 50% and then having them after so many rotations go up to 100% so it goes even faster.



You can also use sensors on robots to sense diffrent things like ultrasonic waves and light. You hook up the sensor to a port at the bottom of the base of the robot and you can program a program to use the sensor to do things like go forward or stop ect. In the picture below we programed it to go forward untill it hears a sound and then it will stop. You can do this for any sensor as long as you hook it up. We were able to also make programs using diffrent sensors to go through diffrent courses and be able go through them without bumping anything. So as you can see sensors are also a huge part of robotics.

=﻿Life on Mars= If there is to be life on Mars and if we are going to detect it we must know what makes up a living organism. There are 8 things that a living things needs to be considered living. It needs to be made of cells, needs materials (food or energy), homeostatic, responds to stimuli, can reproduce, grow, adapts, and can respirate. To be made of cells well obviosly it has to be made of cells. To need materials it must need to have some way of getting energy such as eating. To be homeostatic means that the living things stays about the same whatever the climate is. To respond to stimuli meanst to respond to something that has happened. To reproduce is a simple enough thing, it meas to produce more of itself eigther in a sexual reproduction or an asexual reproduction. To grow means to get bigger, if you didn't know what grow meant before. To adapt is to be able to change depending on what you need to survive giving a diffrent climate or area. To respirate is to be able to take in things needed to break down sugar into energy. All living things need these 8 things and we have classified 2 million organisms to be alive.

First we want to know whether there is life on Mars or not. Second we would have to do reasearch to see when to launch or space ship so that it has to travel the least amount of distance to hit mars and so that it doesn't take hundreds of years for it to catch up with the planet. We would then try to create our robot and rocket and try our experiement. This would be a very long experiment though by finding samples of DNA or other things telling us that there was life. After that we would have to look at the data and figure out if there was life or not on Mars. We would then tell everyone that yes there was life on Mars or no there was not life of Mars. This whole process could take a very long time and hopefully we will come up with something intresting.