Shark Splash '17

Project Description

Team Members : Marwa AlAlawi, Danny Gelman, Katie Henshaw, Shannon Hwang, Jake

2.00b is an introductory mechanical engineering class at MIT. In 2.00b, a team of around five students collaborate for a whole semester to build a functional toy from scratch. I worked on a team that made "Shark Splash”: a water splashing game where we randomly assign a trigger tooth to one of the shark's many falling teeth using a teensy microcontroller. With Shark Splash, children take turns to push down the teeth from a shark's mouth, and if by chance, the trigger tooth is pushed, the shark splashes water and the player is out of the game. The game continues until the last one standing doesn't get any water on them by pushing down the randomized trigger tooth.

In terms of the mechanical component of the project, I was responsible for developing the teeth push and release mechanism where I made small pockets for each tooth, nested within the base, and used bendy polystyrene to allow the teeth to flexibly be pushed down, and then pulled up for resetting. I also created the green foam mold for the toy through sanding, and the final upper mouth piece of the shark. As for the electrical engineering component of the project, I was in charge of making the primary circuit connections ( unsoldered iteration) and integrating the resistors, transistors and fuses. I also wrote code using Arduino for our first works-like model of the toy, where we used an electrical water gun connected to four external buttons to mimic the functionality of Shark Splash. I randomized the buttons such that any of the four buttons could potentially splash water once pressed if one of them happens to be the trigger tooth.

Project Keywords

• Product Design
• Circuits and Microcontrollers
• Mold Design
• Arduino
• Brand identity
• Laser-cutting
• Public Speaking