Thursday, September 16, 2010

Monday 9/13 (80 days left)

We convened to discuss the different directions we had taken and new ideas that had occurred to us since Sunday. After a brief but productive brainstorm session, we decided to continue "thinking with our hands" in chipboard. Diana and Betsy both brought origami books and experience to the table (literally and figuratively), which presented an interesting new concept for us: pyramids, triangles, and hexagons. We went to work building a module out of six adjacent equilateral triangles (each of which were in turn composed of four equilateral triangles- see below, disregard the circle in the center), which would fold into six triangular pyramids.

The idea here was that the surface, while flat/unfolded, would use its triangular solar panels to collect energy from sunlight, and that each larger triangle would fold into its pyramidal form to protect the solar panels and to direct water into the negative space formed by the folding up of the panels, under which would be some collection apparatus.


Though we were forced to end our meeting before realizing this structure, this new direction was an exciting one, and we all felt good about having multiple working ideas.

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