In the past few weeks my group and I having been creating a creative engineering project. We had to select a world problem that could be solved with engineering. Gang activity was our task. Trying to solve gang activity is so broad that it is nearly impossible for a few teenagers like ourselves so we decided to target one aspect of it; gun violence. My group and I researched many topics about gangs and gun violence. We found that the gun most commonly used by black gangs are hand guns. With this information we conjured up a simple idea to prevent the use of guns. Our idea was to create a tracking device built into the safety of guns that notifies authorities when shots are fired. This is a very intricate mechanism that locks the safety of the gun permanently if it is attempted to be taken out.
In order to understand our project more deeply, I researched the anatomy of a hand gun. I learned about how a gun works. This helped with the process of creating the idea for our tracker.
This tracker idea will create a safer environment.
This is the Engineering Design Cycle that helped us create our ideas
1. Identify the need 1. We chose gang activity as our need
2. Research the problem 2. We researched guns, gangs, gun violence and statistics
3. Develop possible solutions 3. We conjured up the tracking device idea
4. Select the most promising solution 4. The tracking idea stuck
5. Construct a prototype 5. Using 123design, we created a virtual prototype
6. Test and evaluate the prototype 6. We evaluated the design on the program
7. Communicate the design 7. I created a presentation and we pitched our idea to the class
8. Redesign
9. Repeat
In order to understand our project more deeply, I researched the anatomy of a hand gun. I learned about how a gun works. This helped with the process of creating the idea for our tracker.
This tracker idea will create a safer environment.
This is the Engineering Design Cycle that helped us create our ideas
1. Identify the need 1. We chose gang activity as our need
2. Research the problem 2. We researched guns, gangs, gun violence and statistics
3. Develop possible solutions 3. We conjured up the tracking device idea
4. Select the most promising solution 4. The tracking idea stuck
5. Construct a prototype 5. Using 123design, we created a virtual prototype
6. Test and evaluate the prototype 6. We evaluated the design on the program
7. Communicate the design 7. I created a presentation and we pitched our idea to the class
8. Redesign
9. Repeat
This project went very smoothly. My group and I worked very well together. We had good communication which helped the project be completed with ease. Something that did not go very well with the project was focus. We were distracted a lot with side conversations which stalled our work. During this project I discovered things about myself. I learned that I am very good with researching. I found the information that I needed quickly. I also learned that I am not good at staying focused. It was very hard trying to stay on track with the distractions that the other team members brought. Next time I will try to limit my distractions. I learned that I am good at giving directions as well. When someone needed something to do, I told them to do something that was proactive. On the next project I will work on not procrastinating on my work like the website update or the presentation. Two pits from this project were the lack of focus because of outside topics and procrastination with our work. Two peaks from this project were the communication of our ideas and the presentation. I created a video that helps explain our product.