景界录

Yup, that's our spring cart.
If you wonder how does it look like in real life, then here it is.
That was fabricated in around July-Aug.
Only up till this week, we have this little spring cart stepped on the real stage to be tested.

Let me tell you about the test.
It's to be run across a 3 metre track carrying a load of 2kg as fast as possible.

The test has 2 days and my group was in the 2nd day.
We have heard news from the 1st day that the best record is 3.6s and we were very eager to beat that record.
We tried it secretly using other dummy mass (which is less than 2kg) and found that we can finish the distance required.

So, thank to the secretly done trial session, we were experts in tie-ing the thread up. In a blink of eye, we had it set up and tried our first run. We took the 2kg mass and it was unexpectedly heavier than our dummy the day earlier. Our first try was a failure that we are about 30cm short from reaching the end.
We did a 2nd test, and found that that it's just half way through...
It was disappointing...

Other groups slowly set theirs up and had them running. Some of them had it done rather fast and we had candidates that make it into 3s (which is our aim). Our spring cart wasn't working like last time and could only travelled half way after several trials.

We took the decision to make changes on our design, by changing the spring placement, flipping the cart around, making it a front-wheel drive instead of a rear-wheel drive. But there was no fruit.
It's only half-way through and we started to give up. Our spring cart love the song 'meet me half way' too much I guess.

More and more groups finished their testing session, either by giving up and passing the test.
We kept on trying and in the end, a revolutionary change on our design, has made us through, in 1.9s.

Sounds great isn't it?
Wants to know the change?
Yes yes, don't worry, I'll tell you!!

I tied a string up and pulled it from the other end.....

Well, of course that doesn't qualify in the test. That's pure playing only. But then, to get optimistic is a good thing that I laughed our failure off.
Our failure is due to the mistake on design, where we had our pulley too small, a decision made by me while doing the design. No people blame me on that, but I was glad that our hardwork sees fruits, too, that we made it half way! At least, we are not the last!