The Experiment Week

Hello everyone, welcome to the biggest week of my senior project journey.

Before I conducted my test, I continued to work on my report on the simulation part. I included some pictures but mostly wrote out what my procedure and conclusions were. It was around three pages by the time that part was done.

Now, for the most exciting part of the senior project, the actual physical experiment. 

Arriving half an hour early to conduct my experiment, I set up the tripods and prepared cameras to record. However, an unfortunate moment happened when the employee, Andres, came to help conduct and show us how to use the ball launcher

I could not put my World Cup balls into the ball launcher. The fear was that since the balls did not have a coating around them, the World Cup balls could get jammed. My heart sank thinking this project would end there, and I would have to cancel and pull out from the senior project. Luckily, Andres offered the suggestion of operating the machine manually, as he would put the balls into the launcher itself instead of on a conveyor belt. This would make it less likely for the ball to jam. 

After setting up my design, where I used cones to pinpoint where the balls were going to land and cameras to track the trajectory of the ball, I was then introduced to how the ball launcher would launch. Sorry to say, the launcher was limited in the speed and initial rotation and only had one option available. The other options involved the ball launching on the ground, which would defeat the purpose of this experiment. I ended up performing 15 launches of the ball and was satisfied with the results. From my eyes, all three balls had a little bit of inconsistency when the ball was launched, though it seemed like the 2010 ball did have the greatest inconsistency. 

Now, it is time to collect and analyze the data this following week, to stay on track.

See you next week!