Our Initial Designs

On September 21st, our team met to discuss what our goals were for this semester's projects. We wanted to challenge ourselves but also wanted to pursue a project that captured our interests.

From Left to Right: Sahara, Arnav, Laura, Sheila, Anthony, and Sachin

We started off by listing off preliminary ideas regarding the theme of our yo-yos. We had a variety of different ideas (you can see them below). Eventually, we voted and we came to realization that all of us wanted to do something related to sustainability. Anthony suggested we name ourselves "Sustainbiliteam" and our group was born.

We decided that we wanted to do something "wind turbine/Earth/solar powered." Funny that sustainability was an option right below!

Each of us spent a few minutes drawing our own designs and ideas of what we thought would be good examples that represented our theme. A few examples can be found below.

We decided to focus on two types of yo-yos:

1. A simple, effective yo-yo: A globe background with rotating wind turbine blades and sun as the centerpiece on each side.

2. A electronic, intense yoyo: One side with a globe background and wind turbine blades, other side with solar panels, both sides connected such that solar panels power rotating wind turbine blades.

We tasked Laura with drawing out our preliminary thoughts for presentation. Those can be found below.

Design 1 - Our different components

Design 1 - The side view

Design 2 - The addition

We still have many questions about the validity of our two preliminary designs:

1. Is there any chance we can utilize another more sustainable material for our yo-yos?

2. Can we incorporate electronics in such a way to make Design 2 a reality?

3. What is the best manner for us to efficiently manufacture all the different components of the yo-yos?

4. Would we have to buy any special materials ourselves, like solar panels or special plastic?

We hope that these questions are answered soon.

Until next time,

Sustainabiliteam.