Practical Mechanics [Tuesday, May 6, 2014]

[momslilassassin]

A redheaded young man with a neatly trimmed beard, dressed in jeans and a black t-shirt, sat on the desk in the front of the classroom and let his legs swing as he waited for the class to arrive.

"Hey," he said with a slightly nervous smile. "I'm Ben Skywalker and this is Practical Mechanics. I graduated from Fandom two years ago, so I know that the experience in this class can range from 'we use carts and oxen at home, what's a car?' to 'I accidentally blew up a small moon and that's why I got sent to this stupid school', so I'm only going to base my critiques of your stuff on your own level of skill, not anyone else's." He glanced around the room. "Please don't use this class to try to blow up a moon. I've seen that sort of device before, so I'll recognize it and trust me when I say that you don't want to go to this particular principal or dean to explain."

He chewed on his lower lip. "I worked for two years at Stark's while I was here, I build droids--tiny and not so tiny robots--in my spare time when I'm not working on schematics for my own spaceship. I've also been stranded on a world where I had to use spare parts of a couple crashed ships to escape, so trust me when I say I know the value of practical mechanics. We'll get to the good stuff in a few weeks--there will be explosions, just not planet destroying ones--but today we're gonna start out small." He pointed to the first student on his left. "Okay, let's do the introduction thing: name, age, and the coolest thing you ever built."

He waved his hand at the piles of cardboard, compasses, exacto knives, pencils, wooden skewers, tape and mousetraps in the center of the room. "Today we're gonna build a better mousetrap...car. These are powered soley by the snap of power you get when the trap releases, so those of you who aren't familiar with how electricity works aren't at a disadvantage. You have a half-hour to conceptualize and build your cars, and then we'll race 'em against each other." He grinned. "It'll be astral."

Comments

Sign in [5/6]

[momslilassassin]

Going fast!

Re: Sign in [5/6]

[ldymacgyver]

Daphne Blake

Re: Sign in [5/6]

[halfbad.livejournal.com]

Nathan Byrn

Introductions!

[momslilassassin]

Name, age, coolest thing you've built!

Re: Introductions!

[halfbad.livejournal.com]

Nathan waited until the very last moment to make his introduction. The only good thing he could find about it was that it didn't have to be written.

"My name is Nathan," he said slowly, keeping his eyes straight ahead. They were uncovered today but everything else was still covered up behind gloves and scarves and hoodies and pants. "And I've never built anything before. I'm not very good with directions."

It wasn't out and out saying he couldn't read but it was close.

Re: Introductions!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

"Barry Ween. 17. When I was ten I built a wallet size fusion reactor," Barry said in an impatient tone. "Can we build something now?"

Re: Introductions!

[pasunereveuse.livejournal.com]

Celia was an idiot for signing up for this class, wasn't she? She felt like it, particularly given how utterly old-fashioned she felt in this crowd.

"I'm Celia Bowen," she said, offering a little wave. "I'll be sixteen next month, and -- well, I've never actually built anything." She colored faintly, then added, "But, um, I'm a magician, and...I take things apart with my mind, sometimes, and put them back together? And it would be good if I could learn to do that with machines."

Re: Introductions!

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

"Eleanor Lamb, sixteen," Eleanor said, chewing her lower lip. "I've never built anything per se, that I can recall, but I'm rather good at dismantling. I used to disable the alarms on the security bots so I could sneak out."

Re: Introductions!

[notconflicted]

"Marasiah Fel, seventeen. I don't build things, I'm just here to learn in case of emergencies," she said honestly.

Re: Introductions!

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

"Jeff Moreau, 17. You can call me Joker, though. The coolest thing I ever built was a deep-space probe that picked up and decoded 200-year-old radio waves. It was really just an omnitool in a box, but it took me months to get it working right. Calculated its distance from earth, cross-referenced that against archives of TV Guide, and Bam! The original broadcasts of Adam West's Ratman, right on my viewscreen. ...And first prize in the science fair, but I'm starting to think maybe that's 'cause the competition was thin."

Re: Introductions!

[nolizardhere]

"My name is Andros," Andros said when it came around to him. "I'm..." hang on, he was doing the conversion. "I think I would be sixteen, by your calendar? And I built a small robot once for a class project. It was supposed to clean your room for you." It had been Zhane's idea, which might also have something to do with, "It didn't really work." He wondered if he should volunteer that his main concern right now was that he was maintaining a spaceship designed for a crew of six or more solo, but that wasn't really within the parameters of what the teacher had asked for.

Build!

[momslilassassin]

Collaborate, talk smack, cut yourself with an exacto knife...

Re: Build!

[halfbad.livejournal.com]

There were so many unfamiliar things in front of him that Nathan didn't even really know what to do. He spent a lot of time just picking things up and staring at them before he made any attempts to combine items into something that might look like a car.

Re: Build!

[notaweenie.livejournal.com]

Huh. A mousetrap car? Okay, Barry could do way better than that.

First he increased the width of the cardboard wheels by cutting multiple circles the same size and then gluing them together for stability purposes. After creating an axle system that would take the initial kinetic to create additional acceleration, Barry put together the car and included a curved cardboard front end for aerodynamics and added a spoiler on the back of the mousetrap car because...

Okay honestly it didn't do anything but the spoiler looked cool.

Barry just hoped the axle modification didn't catch on fire.

Re: Build!

[pasunereveuse.livejournal.com]

Celia barely knew what half these materials were, and it rather seemed like cheating to magically modify them at all.

It took most of her time to get the rubber band in place where she wanted it; the result was that she had a well-placed rubber band, but the rest of her car was liable to fall apart. (Unless she magically held it together, which...again, felt like cheating. Damn.)

Re: Build!

[nobloodymessiah.livejournal.com]

Eleanor was going to try to follow the instructions precisely, like if, somehow, she measured the wheels a millimeter off, the car wouldn't go.

Re: Build!

[fly-so-serious.livejournal.com]

Joker went through three extra sheets of cardboard before he was satisfied with the parts he'd cut out, and then went back and cut out the wheels again when his skewer-axles didn't go through dead center the first time.

In the end, he had a near-perfect car... with one major problem. "Can someone else pull the spring back for me?" he asked, irritated that he needed help with it. Well, not needed, per se, but his fingers were extra-fragile, and he didn't want to risk messing with a snapping spring.

Re: Build!

[nolizardhere]

Andros had never done anything like this before, so even though it seemed pretty basic, he was careful to follow the directions. As he worked he felt like he got a good grasp of the engineering and physics involved; enough that he made a few minor modifications he hoped would make his car more aerodynamic.

Race

[momslilassassin]

The RNG has spoken for pairings and results!

First Heat

[momslilassassin]

Barry & Eleanor (Barry wins)
Nathan & Joker (Joker wins)
Andros & Daphne (Andros wins)
Celia & Sia (Sia wins)

Second Heat

[momslilassassin]

Barry & Sia (Barry wins)
Joker & Andros (Andros wins)

Final Heat

[momslilassassin]

Barry & Andros (Andros wins)

Talk to Ben & Cassidy!

[momslilassassin]

After class or before!

Re: Talk to Ben & Cassidy!

[nothornlessrose.livejournal.com]

Cassidy was quite interested in what was going to happen today. With all of the things she had seen in four years in Fandom, this version of a car was new.

OOC

[momslilassassin]

During the race, feel free to mod parts coming off, cars not driving where they are supposed to be, etc.!

And since I'm five hours ahead of the East Coast, slowplay is always love.