Wild Animals - Day 4 - Week 4 - Mark Day School

What sound does a Tigray make in the wild? It's hard to describe but our intrepid tinkerers have developed a system of PVC pipes that approximates it quite nicely. And now that the head is attached to the body, defining features such as ears are starting to appear.

How large are Belephant wings? Larger than you might expect. And how will the Belephant move? Answering that required tilting the animal on its side and propping it up to add wheels. It was a team effort for sure.

After our mechanical engineering workshops earlier in the week, answers to previously daunting questions came within reach... Q: "How can we make this wobbly head stronger?" A: "Triangles!" Q: "How should we raise and lower these wings?" A: "Pulleys!" "Levers!"

And we're making mistakes and learning from them, as we always do. I myself showed students how to attach hinges for a wing and after they had connected it with four screws, I realized I had placed it on the wrong side of the 2x3. Modeling a positive spirit and being humble is something we collaborators do all the time. Today's demonstration at open circle was about how to keep a drill bit straight to avoid breaking it. We've lost a few to pressure applied at an angle.

We also train on new tools as tinkerers need them. Today's additions to our toolbox were a jigsaw (for some; quite a few tinkerers had already used it earlier in the week), a hacksaw, and a heated rope cutter.

See even more photos from today and the rest of the week on our Flickr page.