course_planning:183_projects:f18_project_4

Project 4: Part A: Pinball wizard designer

  • Non-constant forces
  • Impulse and obtaining impulse from a graph
  • $\Delta p = \int_{t_i}^{t_f} \vec{F}_{net} \; dt$
  • Free-body Diagrams
  • Interpreting sinusoidal graph
  • Constant acceleration - kinematic equations

You and your colleagues work for Doc Brown Pinball Emporium a subsidiary of the Carver Media Group, a pinball machine manufacturer. The design of the latest machine has been divvied up and allocated to different parts of the company. Your team has been chosen to design the launch chamber and spring mounted firing plunger (i.e. system to fire the ball from the bottom to the top of the table). The team designing the second part of the table have requested that the ball enters the main table through a small swing door at the top of the launch chamber. They require the ball to enter the main table at a speed of 2 to 3 ${\rm m}/{\rm s}$ and the swing door to be placed at least 10 ${\rm cm}$ above the level of the spring mount. They say that impulse that occurs as the ball travels through their door is 0.070 ${\rm kg}\cdot{\rm m}/{\rm s}$. The mass of the ball being fired is 0.040 ${\rm kg}$ and the bottom of the firing chamber is displayed in the following diagram:

You have to design the length and the tilt of the pinball machine so that the pinball enters the table with the above conditions. The spring department has supplied you with a spring and the following representations to understand the springs performance. Design the pinball machine and supply evidence that your design will work with the supplied spring.

Project 4: Part B: Escape from Korath

  • Constant velocity and constant force models
  • Springs and spring forces
  • Atoms and materials
  • Young’s modulus

You are a member of a team of scientists who have been working on a dimensional gate. After years of trying to find a sufficient power source to power the gate you get sent a mysterious power source discovered in the tomb of a Norwegian viking lord. After turning on the gate using the mysterious power source, you and your team gets sucked into another universe, which you quickly figure out is the Marvel Comics Universe.

You are arrested and set to be executed for being enemies of the Kree Empire. You quickly manage to escape, but you are being chased by Korath the Pursuer. Along with your trusty stopwatch, a thermometer, and an apple for sustenance, you also brought along a piece of tech that alerts you of another operational dimensional gate at the bottom of a snowy cliff. You reach the edge of the cliff, which is apparently named the “Cliff of Insanity.” You look over the edge and through a dense fog. You notice a metal platform that is positioned at the bottom of the cliff but you can't judge this distance by eye. The platform is rigged with an electronic switch that will trigger if any metal comes into contact with it - activating an alarm that will alert Korath of your location.

Fortunately, the cliff top has a supply shed that contains three very large spools of unusual metal cables composed of adamantium, unobtainium, and vibranium; each cable has a diameter of 2.0 cm. In the shed is also an incredibly strong pair of metal shears, which can cut the cables to any length, and a clamping mechanism that can be used to attach one end of a cable to the edge of the cliff. To escape you need to climb down one of these cables to the platform. What material and length will do the job?

You pick up the metal cables and notice that each is quite stretchy; the table below gives the length of the bond between two adjacent atoms ($d$) and the stiffness ($k_{s,i}$) of a single interatomic spring. Each element has a simple cubic crystal structure.

Element Bond Length (m) Stiffness of Single Interatomic Spring (N/m)
Adamantium $2.3\times10^{-10}$ $4.7\times10^{-2}$
Unobtainium $3.5\times10^{-10}$ $3.8\times10^{-2}$
Vibranium $4.3\times10^{-10}$ $1.2\times10^{-2}$
  • course_planning/183_projects/f18_project_4.txt
  • Last modified: 2019/02/01 18:39
  • by pollanen