Mechanics (extra 3rd prototype): Wooden Wave

Wooden Wave 

I liked that my 2 mechanics prototypes were complementary (Harmonograph and Spirograph), since I think interaction with both might enhance the users understanding of the relationship between gear ratios and enhance the overall experience. However, since they were so similar in concept, I wanted to make a third mechanics prototype that was entirely different. I didn't bring it to the Exploratorium on the day of the mechanics exhibits, because the pieces on the dowel came loose, but I want to share it on the blog:

Project in a Nutshell: This is a prototype that has two hand cranks, and these cranks translate into a wave motion of wood, similar to Britt's Sine Wave Generator and Winnie's Mirror Ripples (all three use the same mechanism with dowels and ovals to create the wave motion.) Since there are two parallel hand cranks, the user can turn them in unison or apart, to see the effects of these motions on the wooden wave above. 

Concept and Ideal Interaction: The initial inspiration definitely stemmed off of the automata activities we did in the Tinkering lab, as I think Winnie and Britt were inspired too. I originally wanted to show a sine wave being generated from the motion too, but I wanted a second degree of freedom where the user could experiment with the waveform. Thus I have two cranks that I hoped could create more complex motions of the wood's movement as the user turns the cranks at different rates or different offsets. I have a video of my attempt to test my prototype. I realized there was too much friction, and near the end the wooden planks all fall to one side... I'd imagine with acrylic or a frictionless environment, the movement would be quite elegant (unlike this video):

Problems and Improvements: As you may notice from the video, there were several problems with this prototype. First, I forgot an important lesson taken from our time in the Tinkering lab: the power of friction. We discovered that we didn't even need gears to have foam ovals rotate each other, because of the friction, which was a neat surprise! However, I forget that friction can play against you too. I wanted the wooden planks on top of the dowel and circles to slip back and forth, thus exhibiting up and down motion, but not side to side motion. However, because of the strong friction between wood on wood, the turning of the dowels created a lot of sideways force that would cause the planks to go shooting left and right. I eventually tried to solve for this problem by using two sheets of acrylic, or in the video, two books to contain the planks in place. However, next time using something with less friction like acrylic would be a better idea and would better exhibit the ideal motion I had intended. Currently as it stands, the wooden wave is a bit hard to use since there is so much friction causing the planks to pop up.

Other things of note: Not directly related to Wooden Wave, but related to Tinkering Lab and mechanics, I mentioned I made a wire boxing kangaroo in the Tinkering lab, and since Sebastian encouraged that we post the end results here, I'll post a video (I already posted an image in a previous blog post.) While I liked the extra-long arms, I ultimately ended up snipping the arms shorter because the long arms were causing the motion to be a bit jerky:

Organic Gears

When I studied abroad in Paris this past spring quarter, I had the chance to go to place called Le Musée des Arts et Metiers, which translates roughly to the museum of arts and engineering.  The museum has a fantastic collections of items and artifacts that show the history of the sciences, engineering, and art and where they combined.  From early airplane models to iron casting molds, the museum covered a wide range of topics.  However, the items that shocked and amazed me were sets of gears shaped like hearts, squares and other surprising shapes.

Gears have always fascinated me.  As something commonplace in so many machines, gears have represented the quintessence of engineering to me, yet never before had I imagined that they could be anything but purely circular.  Having had such a positive reaction when I saw them enshrined in a glass case in Le Musée des Arts et Metiers, I wanted to further explore these items and give others the chance to better understand the fundamentals behind gears.

While ideally I would have found templates that replicated the gears I saw in Paris, I was unable to find the patterns I was looking for.  However, I did find a YouTube video tutorial on making and creating organic gears by hand.

Using this video tutorial, I was able to create my own set of gears though I certainly had a good amount of trouble with this and went through several gears before finally succeeding.

While this first prototype was successful, the gears only fully aligned when I drove it from the larger of the two gears.  Furthermore, while this prototype was fascinating to almost everyone that I showed it to, I felt that it was too simple as most would only spin the gears once and then say that's cool.  The most reaction I got from it was when people turned the gears more slowly to see how each tooth aligned.  I needed to create something more interactive.

The first prototype

For my second prototype, I wanted to prove that I could make multiple gears that worked, which I did with a bit more ease than last time.  However, I felt stuck since I had trouble getting people to interact with the gears on a higher level.  The experience of creating the gears was exhilarating to say the least, yet I knew such a process was to difficult and lengthy to turn into an exhibit in that way.  I felt that at the least users should have a way to test how gears fit into each other.  While I had Nish try to align the gears himself, I was not quite comfortable having users do this as I feared frustration in a museum environment with little guidance.  At last I settle on an idea, that unfortunately, I was unable to prototype.

My first realization was that several types of gears were possible - a positive and negative mating gear multiplied by the number of gears available through ratios.  For example, the first pair that I made as well as the pair in the video tutorial have a ratio of 2:1, which means the outside edges of the larger repeat once.  If the base gears used to make organic were 1:1 the outside edges wouldn't repeat, while a 3:1 ratio would repeat twice.  This leaves a large combination of potential gears from a basic positive-negative gear pattern.

A second set of gears

With this knowledge in mind, I decided that to make the exhibit more interactive, I would have several gears set up and aligned that visitors could see and turn by hand that could not be removed.  I would then create a board on which visitors could assemble trains of gears like the ones in the example and figure out how gears lined up.  To minimize confusion, positive and negative gears would be painted different colors to show visitors that the gears they line up should alternate in color.

I feel that this prototype would be much more successful than my initial idea.  I would be eager to test out interaction on users and see how much trouble other had assembling gears, how interested they were, and gain further feedback.

Harry Potter Automata

The purpose of this exploration was to Create a mechanism that drives a whimsical behavior, in the hopes that this interesting behavior will lead the user to want to investigate the mechanism responsible for it. I was inspired by the funny automaton created by Bernie Lubell and wanted to create one of my own.

The box had Harry spinning in a circle, and the dragon moving side to side. I had a great amount of difficulty getting the prototype to its current stage, and realized that even a seemingly simple mechanism is incredibly difficult to pull of successfully. 

The ideal user interaction would involve turning an appropriately sized crank to move the mechanism.

There are a number of things that can be improved with this exhibit. Firstly, I would make the box out of clear acrylic so that the user can see the mechanism. I would then reduce the friction by making the circumference of the track that Harry slides on much smaller. I would also use the laser cutter to create parts that fit well together.  The scale of the project is also important to consider, I probably would make it something that could sit on a table.

#Ratchet

#Ratchet

The first mechanics exploration is a simple ratcheting mechanism. I was hoping to showcase an interesting mechanism and boil it down to the most simple elements.  The piece was a mechanism that celebrates the mechanism itself. 

The ideal visitor experience, would have a visitor turn the crank that moved the ratchet. This would lead to the user moving to a second section, with examples of common items that use this mechanism. The second part would be more like a poster similar to the one below the giant mirror.

Some problems that I encountered were the holes were too big for the screws, which ended up falling out. The prototype in its current version also has a complicated crank, that does not allow the user to set it down. This would definitely need to change in the future.

Twirling lights

After making the mirror ripples exhibit, this was another mirror-mechanical exhibit that I thought would be fun to make. In contrast to the controlled wavelike motion of the previous prototype, I tried to make this one whimsical and focused more on the mechanism of movement itself. I had shards of mirrors glued onto the cams and wheels, and the crank was turned it would cause the wheels to turn in an elaborate and slightly random way, thus projecting random shimmers and flickers onto a tilted screen behind it. I really liked how the flickers somehow resembled an underwater scene, and it was really fun to watch what angles of the mirrors would produce the flashiest results.

The ideal interaction would be that people would look at the light patterns, and then observe the wild movements the wheels would make that would generate these reflections.

Sebastian pointed out that it might be more interesting if it were more  the gears were changeable, and though I'm still not very sure about how I'd make that work, it's something that I'd like to look into. It's definitely something that this prototype would benefit from, since at this stage it is still somewhat lacking in interactive elements.

Mirror Ripples

In the beginning I knew I wanted to create a ripple effect with mirrors, and play around with how it's motion changes the way light reflects off of it. It was really fun thinking up ways to make the mirror bend nicely, and though threading them all together was fairly time consuming, I think it works pretty well. I'm not sure how sturdy it is though!
I used an online graphing calculator to simulate and find a nice polar equation to use for the wheels-- I went through several before I decided on this relatively simple one (from http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems/gpugems_ch01.html) -- it was one that I had experimented with before, for a project in simulating actual water ripples.

I imagine the exhibit being at a slightly larger scale, with a point light source and a white screen above it. People could turn the crank and see how the light shimmers and bounces around on the screen, and compare it to natural water reflections. It would be a nice and simple (albeit crude) approximation of why water ripples generate the patterns they do.
For potential additions to the exhibit: It would be cool to have a small water tank next to the mechanism, with light also shining onto it! Or what I was originally thinking of doing was to have various cranks of differently shaped wheels that people could use and compare.

I remade this prototype later, scaling it up a bit and making the ripples go a little bit smoother by lengthening the mirror mesh and adjusting the polar function of the wheels so that it did not vary as much. I would have liked to use the original polar function, but my mirrors weren't divided finely enough for the original intended effect. I also added a white screen above the mirror. The reflections were interesting and surprising, but they were still a bit more choppy than I'd have liked-- I think I would definitely need to make the mirror mesh even larger to achieve the original effect I was hoping for.

Wanna Have a Catch?

As with These Shoes Weren't Made for Walking, I again wanted to make mechanics personal and give users a directly feel for how physics worked while allowing users to explore together.  One of my favorite parts of physics is the physics of rotation from conservation of angular momentum to centrifugal force.

For this exhibit, I remembered an inflatable ball that I had gotten as a kid with a set of magnets on one side.  While I never discovered what the magnets were for, they served as weights that dramatically offset the ball's center of mass such that when you threw it with any amount of spin it fluttered through the air in an odd pattern making it extremely difficult to catch.  My goal here was pure replication.

I found simple plastic balls and attached a weight to one side and gave it to friends to play with.  While invariable, friends loved throwing the ball on the ground and smashing it, others tried rolling it and seemed to have a lot of fun watching the unexpected patterns and moves it made.

On one hand, I know that moving forward I would have to make the ball much more durable so that any kid big or small would have trouble destroying it no matter how much he or she smashed it.  On the other hand, I would love to increase the ways in which a user could interact with it by making it able to bounce.  Lastly, while I was able to encourage friends to play catch with me and then discover the "wow" factor behind the ordinary ball, I would want to design a way to make it seem more intuitive for others to play with the ball such as an instructive and catchy title such as "Wanna Have a Catch?"

These Shoes Weren't Made for Walking

In making a mechanics exhibit, I wanted to focus on creating a piece that was highly interactive and personal.  While I knew I had a strong idea in making inorganic gears, I had trouble coming up with other ideas.  When I asked a friend what her favorite physics phenomenon was (I was mostly joking) she said she didn't know but that there was physics in everything even walking.  Inspired, I researched the physics of walking which led me to a very interesting article on the physics of walking in high heels, which served as my inspiration for this exhibit.

Having never walked in high heels, I was amazed to learn how wearing high heels fundamentally changes how you walk and present yourself.  To walk with any sort of consistency, you have to thrust your chest and hips forward to compensate for a new center of mass, while tightening your calves in order to account for a loss in stability.

A few thoughts ran through my mind immediately.  First and foremost, I was excited about the concept of having those who have never walked in high heels experience what it was like and discovering that you had to change how you walked.  Second, realizing how much high heels changed the way you walked, I wondered if I could create other shoes that also fundamentally changed the way you walked and that gave users a greater consciousness of the way they walked.  I realized the best way for users to understand the incredible mechanics behind walking was to push them outside of their comfort zone by forcing them to learn to walk in a very different way.

When I set about building prototypes, my goals were to create shoes that altered both stability and center of mass.  Additionally, while I wanted to have others feel what it was like to walk in high heels and other less natural forms of footwear, I didn't want the idea of wearing heels to be a deterrent and focused on creating shoes that suggested function over form.

A friend strapping on some of the shoes

I created three pairs of shoes – wedges, inverse wedges, and a pair of heel-less, and unstable shoes – three basic options that demonstrated three different ways of walking.  Once finished, as with my other mechanics exhibits, I had my fellow housemates try on these shoes.  The results and feedback were overwhelmingly positive.  Those who tried them really enjoyed walking around in them and even found new ways to experiment with them.  Before long, my friends were mixing and matching different shoe types and racing, running, and jumping.

Mixing and matching different shoes

While these shoes were a great success, if I were to develop this into an exhibit, I would want to make sure that they were safe, less clunky, and didn't cause injuries.  While I designed these shoes to be purely about interaction and play, I believe that whatever sign accompanies such an exhibit will need to prompt further inquiry through questions that force the user to think critically about the way they walk. Moving forward, I would also like to experiment with variety of other shoes. Shoes that make it extremely difficult to walk in, shoes that give you two left feet or switch your left and right feet as well as shoes that force users to mimic the different ways animals walk.

Drawing Watt?

From the mechanics inspiration links, I was really intrigued by the mechanical linkages, particularly the surprising & simple things you can do with four bar linkages. "Drawing Watt?" was an attempt to capture a bit of the ingenuity and magic of Watt's straight line generator. The mechanism, which approximates a straight line, was designed for Watt's steam engine, to convert rotary motion to linear motion.

I created a drawing tool using Watt's mechanism so users can get a feel of how the "straight line" is generated. There are multiple holes that the user can stick a marker into to see how the curve differs. The ends of the long bars are also connected to removable magnets, so users can move the tool around the table to see watt they can draw. I am pleased with this element of user discovery and adjustment, though it could be further refined.

The intended effect is that users approach the exhibit wondering how such a rotating mechanism can produce a straight line, and walk away amazed at what a few fixed and flexible joints can do. 

To take this further, I would create multiple stations of different straight line generators and approximators, all of which use only mechanical linkages, so users can see the diversity of arrangements and the creativity of these mechanism designers. 

Putting the generators in real life situations could also be interesting: showing these mechanisms actually at work in steam engines or modern vehicles.

Sebastian mentioned the Hyperbolic Slot exhibit at the Exploratorium for inspiration. I think there's a lot of refinement that can be done to cultivate that moment of surprise and discovery. In the hyperbolic slot exhibit, for example, the slot adds a lot of suspense for the user as they spin the pole around. 

Tickle machine

The tickle machine was inspired by two questions:

1. Can a machine tickle?

2. Can you use the machine to tickle yourself?

Researchers have found both automated machines and people can tickle. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12198790

A philosopher also used a mirror illusion and a rubber hand to have people tickle themselves.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=248041246

I wanted to replicate the findings of these studies with a simpler mechanism.

First I found that adding an intermediary between the person tickling and the person being tickled does not hinder the tickling sensation.

Then, I tried to automate the mechanism of tickling.

Tickling myself.

Unfortunately, tickling myself didn't quite work. More testing should be done to see if this works when other people use the machine to tickle you, whether it works when you close your eyes, and whether unspecified time delays or more unpredictable mechanisms induce the tickling sensation. 

In later iterations, I would also make the movements of the fingers more forceful.

Before doing the fingers, I also tried making a tickle gun, with a feather releasing to tickle after a delay when the trigger is pulled (like a Jack in the box). However, I found that feathers don't work well on many parts of the body to tickle and usually requires bare skin.

The idea with this exhibit is to get users to think critically about perception and how the brain can be tricked. Even if the exhibit "doesn't work" for some people because they're not ticklish, I think it poses a thought provoking question and perhaps even experiments to try themselves. Perhaps it'd start a few tickling wars as well between siblings.

Prototype Reflections

Anamorphic Reflections

Description :

The goal of this piece was to intrigue the user to consider the way they usually perceive a mirror.  A mirror is usually thought of as a way to see yourself, to show yourself what is on you and behind you.  This piece, in contrast takes something that is not "normal" in the real world and makes it look "normal" in the mirror.  We are used to fun house mirrors making reality strange, but not the other way around.  

This prototype was made by stretching a 3D model of a bird along a circular path, then 3D printing that warped model.  When the model is placed in front of a cylindrical mirror of the right radius the bird appears “normal” in the mirror in comparison the shape of the bird in real life. 

After interacting with this piece a visitor might think…about mirrors creating illusions, not just reflecting reality. 

Ways it’s successful :

This piece definitely produces a moment of excitement and disbelief when the user is able to properly position the piece in relation to the mirror. 

Ways it’s not successful :

The bird form is not skewed enough to make it unrecognizable before it’s placed in front of the mirror.  I had imagined the interaction with this piece to take place with three different radii of cylinders giving the user the opportunity to see how the radii and distance from piece of the cylinder affect the success of the phenomenon.  I don’t think this interchangeability of cylindrical mirrors is interesting or different enough to be the interaction of the exhibit.

Potential improvements :

The discovery could be made stronger by using pieces that were skewed into forms the person playing with the exhibit could not recognize until they were properly positioned in front of the cylindrical mirror.  It would also be stronger if there were multiple skewed pieces to explore with one mirror. 

Pseudoscope 

Description :       

The pseudoscope is meant to change your depth perception. The brain is wired hard to recognize normalcy and familiarity in what you perceive and has great difficulty reconciling disorienting ways of seeing. 

After interacting with this piece a visitor might think…about the way your brain processes images (would need a good description/diagram for this).

Ways it’s successful :

It elicits a fairly obvious act on the part of the viewer. 

Ways it’s not successful :

It doesn’t really work.  It is disorienting, but did not significantly change perception because the brain is so resistant to those confusions. 

Potential improvements :

I think this experiment would work better if the mirrors were places farther away from each other to create a more dramatic stereo effect. 

Harmonograph

Description :       

The harmonograph is a way of translating the motion of two pendulums swinging in sine wave patterns at a right angle from each other into an elliptical drawing. 

After interacting with this piece a visitor might think… that the motion looks really cool when it’s drawn out.  (But I think it would require a solid exhibit description in order to explain the phenomenon a bit more)

Ways it’s successful :

It demonstrates this phenomenon of two sign waves working in three dimensions to become an elliptical form. 

Ways it’s not successful :

The difficulty in this piece comes from the required level of precision it mandates in order to work.  With time and material constraints I was able to build a harmonograph that works when it has assistance swinging, but wasn’t calibrated finely enough to maintain the rhythmic swinging motion I was hoping for.  It also lacks refinement in determining what exactly the interaction would be.  I’m not sure if someone would swing the pendulum to get it going or whether it is more something you just watch and don’t physically interact with. 

Potential improvements :

I think the biggest improvement would just be improved calibration at this point. 

Sine Wave Generator

Description :

The sine wave generator is a piece aimed at creating a complex mechanical set up that translates into something beautiful and simple : a sine wave. 

After interacting with this piece a visitor might think…about the complexity behind simple technologies.    

Ways it’s successful :

It allows the user to directly interact with the piece by cranking the cams to make the mechanics move. 

Ways it’s not successful :

It doesn’t do anything wowing, just a translation of motion into a different form. 

Potential improvements :

This could be improved by making the mechanics much more complex and creating some sort of mechanical version of Rube Goldberg machine that would translate into a simple and beautiful motion.  In order to improve this I would also need to think more about how to design the interaction so it would be more than turning a crank and so it could be properly placed to allow the person interacting to both instigate the motion and see that final translation of the motion.    

IR Camera

Description :

This exhibit allows you to see thing that are only visible in infrared which is not part of the visible spectrum. 

After interacting with this piece a visitor might think…that there’s a lot more to the world that we don’t notice. 

Ways it’s successful :

It allows the user to see the world in a different way.  It also has a strong WOW factor. 

Ways it’s not successful :

It doesn’t actually work yet…

Potential improvements :

Getting it to work! Designing a dark box that allowed for straight-forward and interesting user interaction with the camera. 

    

                                                           

Spinning Color Wheel

Description :

This exhibit encourages the visual mixing of color.  We are all used to mixing color with liquids and paints, but mixing colors with our perception itself is an unfamiliar concept. 

After interacting with this piece a visitor might think…that we can’t see motion as discreetly as they had thought. 

Ways it’s successful :

It allows for a playful interaction and unexpected discovery. 

Ways it’s not successful :

It doesn’t work very well because I need to properly design the colors to mix together. 

Potential improvements :

Make it easier to spin and make that motion obvious when you pick it up.  Create colors so they mix together fluidly.