Peer Review

The group we previously overviewed consisted of the making of two vehicles, each joining from a landing point to another (Auckland and Waiheke); ones function revolved around the use of non-renewable energy in order to travel from one side to the other, while the other relied on renewable energy. The first compulsory vehicle they used was a lantern that operated by the combustion of hydrogen produced from the flames created underneath of the lantern. Few modifications had to be made in order to improve the function ability of the vehicle, including the idea of adding and removing parts of the object, as well as distorting the shape of it. Materials such as seaweed and rice paper had to be involved for the process of modifying it. As we got to the part of testing the flying vehicle, the lantern unexpectedly caught fire and turned into ashes within seconds after the incident. That resulted from the distraction of the wind blowing the flames of the lantern too close from the actual paper material. The second vehicle consisted of a generated hydro powered water bottle attached from a horizontal rope (ones that connects to Auckland to its destination) from one point to another. The idea of this vehicle worked by the pressurized force applied within the bottle originated by an air pump, which was then released once the bottle was as its maximum pressure load capacity, creating a powerful forward force, dragging the vehicle in front in a very quick motion. Although this idea was well thought, one major default could be spotted, and that is the question on how does the vehicle keeps moving when no more forces is being applied to the vehicle during its trajectory.

From what we have learned from the group, lots of research experiments were made in which most of them ended up being drastic failures for the sake of finding a way on how to improve the flying ability of the lantern. Useful information such as learning about the weight of the materials in relation with the lantern had to be considered, in which they concluded that adding pieces of seaweed ended up increasing the downward force of the flying vehicle when being lifted in the air. At the end of the day, we left knowing that the amount of choices we had on improving the lantern was very limited due to the increase rate of risks having the paper material (of the lantern) being caught on fire. Learning the ‘hard way’ through try outs and failures seemed to be the best appeal the vehicle workshop had to provide in order for us to succeeding in making a decent flying object.