Pandora's Box 3/29

    Now that I have gotten my fixed and movable joints to work, my next challenge is to get the top of my box to stay closed. I started out by cutting out another side like the one I finished with last time. But I changed it to make it shorter so that the sides would not overlap. When I put the other side onto the box I could get each side to close individually...but I couldn’t both of them to close at once. I thought it was because one side was shorter than the other one, so one side was slightly wider on top. I thought that if I made the sides the same length both of them would close. But, my professor suggested that since I close the top the same way that joined my fixed sides. 
So I decided to try that first. I cut out two out of the four sides to test them out before I cut out the other sides. But it did not work because the top of the part that stuck out of the side was too wide. Before I had chance to modify my design and try it again I had to leave.
    Over the weekend I cajoled my friend into hanging out in the science center with me to finish my box. I was still not convinced that the method I had tried before would not work if both  sides were the same length. So I tried it, and of course I was wrong. I couldn’t get both sides to close at once. We both had to leave before I could try other ways.
    I had also begun thinking about cutting designs on the sides of my box. Maria beautified her box with some really cute little stars. Thinking about cutting designs out with a laser led me to thinking about carving pumpkins, which inevitably led to me thinking carving pumpkins with lasers. Apparently, laser cut pumpkins produce “Impressive Results and Terrible Smells.” I also thought about mimicking papel picado designs with the laser cutter. This is actually really popular for wedding invitations on Etsy. If you were feeling especially pretentious you could make a political statement by cutting out Banksy stencils on the side of your box. I stuck with simple zigzags.

I have yet to find a solution for closing my box. So it is like Pandora’s box, since it can never be closed!
    Random observations from this week: I wish that we had at least two laser cutters. It is hard to be productive in class when everyone is waiting to take their turn using it, and out class is tiny. I know this sounds pretty entitled, but we do have an ice-cream endowment. Come on Wellesley, can we have at least one more laser cutter? Also, engineering is endless frustration. But it is actually pretty rewarding when something works.