So D.I. Was a success. We (Owen, Jamie, Tamara, Luca O.G., and Marshall) went to the provincial tournament on Saturday, and it was pretty successful. While our presentation Wes completely different, most of DI stayed the same. Our challenge was still to build two free-standing structures out of nothing but balsa wood, and they still worked together to hold weight.

Our instant challenge this time was to build one or two mechanisms that would push small balls into a cardboard tube. These mechanisms were attached to string and a chopstick, and we could only touch the chopstick. We built two mechanisms, one was just a plastic cup, and the other was sort of a shovel that would push the ball along the ground.
Sadly, we ran out of time to push all three balls into the tube. But we did get the ping pong ball into the tube which scored us a nice 10-40 points.

Earlier I mentioned that our presentation was completely different than before. This is totally true. Before during the regionals we presented a news story about a collapsed bridge on. The border between Nepal and China. The bridge we collapsed because of a large earthquake, ant the two representatives had a conflict when they had different models they needed to test. Because building a bridge would be incredibly difficult in the Nepalese mountains, we had to change the location to something more localized.

More localized being the west coast of North America. What do we have a lot of here? Earthquakes. What do earthquakes cause? Tsunamis. What can we do to stop tsunamis? Build a giant wall of course! We made two different support models to be put into a wall to try and disrupt waves and tsunamis from reaching both the Oregon coast and Vancouver island. One was a rectangular prism, and the other was a triangular prism. The plan was to make the wall segments out of these structures, but we didn’t know which one would hold more weight. Turns out we ran out of time before either structure broke, but they held at least 90 pounds. That’s pretty impressive for the lightest wood on earth.

D.I. Was tough, but im glad I did it. I’m really happy with my teams job and the work we did. Honestly, I didn’t enjoy regionals, which put a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. Regionals were in a tight, underground, and stuffy gym. This in and of itself wasn’t fun. But I also had a bad head cold. That combined with the stuffy gym was horrible! I had to go home early just so I wouldn’t pass out.

Provincials was a lot better, though. We were still in a gym, but doors were open andI wasn’t sick. One down side, however, is that most of another team didn’t take any of their stuff to or from D.I., so we took about half of their stuff. My mom was not happy, and had a stern talk with the three that didn’t take any stuff. Kiefer took the other half of stuff, and Raina couldn’t take anything cause her car is too small.

So yea, D.I. Was a good experience, and now I know what to expect for next year. I also learned lots of valuable knowledge for next time, too. Bring it on, D.I.!