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Adapting
Earthquake Simulator
The Dos Pueblos Engineering academy recently had its senior showcase. The showcase displayed the senior projects which they worked on throughout the year. Many classes on May 31st toured the showcase, viewing the finished results without seeing the various iterations and changes that were made throughout the course of construction.
The projects that were shown were not always the first idea that the seniors had.
“[It was] probably our eighth idea overall,” senior Rayne LumenSolus said, “Our first idea was like lasers, crazy stuff.”
They ultimately had changed the parts that controlled the whole project themselves. The Earthquake Simulator project changed the mechanism for the shaking, and even changed from shaking the whole table to only shaking part of it. The team added other components as well.
“We added panels, and we added how the control panel works.” Rayne said.
Seniors Gabriel Casselman and Rayne LumenSolus with their earthquake simulator. Photo by Axel Tenje.
Andrew McEachen and Ava Warmath, creators of the moving mosaic. Photo by Axel Tenje.
After programming the exhibit had the capability to do multiple advanced functions like Battleship, Connect 4, and Tic-Tac-Toe.
Despite some setbacks and issues, the students proved that they were always looking to improve their skills, even when they’re seemingly succeeding.
“I don't like when I don't know why something works, so I’ll usually figure out why. But I think that doing that makes it so that my code is stronger,” Rece Graham said.
“Everything [has] changed since the beginning,” Rayne said.
Difficulties forced the seniors to adapt in different ways to get their projects to work. In the case of the Moving Mosaic project, stickers were a sticking point in the design process.
“As far as the stickers we tried out a bunch of options until one of them was pretty good,” senior Ava Warmath said.
Originally, the Moving Mosaic project was focused on moving one tile at a time, but the scope of the project changed over time.
“We were like, 'Hey let's add some games, let's do more complex things like Battleship,” Ava said.
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Rece Graham next to the Reflex Tester exhibit he helped program