Toy Dissection
Toy Dissection
Overview:
In groups of three or four pick out a wind up toy and attempt to determine how it works. First play with the toy and discuss how it might work in your group, then sketch out a diagram of what you think is inside the toy. These ideas are then presented to the class. Next take the toy apart and draw a diagram of what is actually inside of it. Present this material to the class emphasizing the differences between the way the toy actually works and how you thought that it worked.
My experience:
The purpose of this experiment was to help get us in the mind set for our first project where we designed our own toys. I learned a decent amount about how some toys worked and, more importantly, got so experience with the idea of reverse engineering. Before starting any new project it always a good idea to take a look at any kind of similar product on the market and ask yourself how everything works. This was a process I was already fairly familiar with, so this activity mainly just gave me some good ideas on how to design moving parts on toys. The toy we dissected was a white mouse that very awkwardly rolled around on two wheels with a wildly flailing tail. We determined it to be a very poorly designed toy, as it did not run for long and was very unentertaining, and for the most part were able to easily figure out how it worked. The interesting features which I did not expect would be its ratcheting system, which was simply a sliding gear that only makes contact when turned in one direction, and a gear for changing direction of rotation for the tail.
