On the first day we came in to work, we had to trace our shapes onto the wood so that we could cut them out. Piece of cake, right? Not exactly. we only had this layout to guide us, on which I had written the measurements of each piece-- how long the sides had to be-- but nothing else. What's more, I'd used an absurd system which required us to do a conversion every time we wanted to draw a line. We basically got nothing done that day.
But then I went home and made THIS because math is your friend! First I converted all the lengths into inches for easy readability; then, using the Law of Cosines (which is definitely my BFF now) I figured out what every angle would have to be in order for each shape's lines to match up. This next day, when we went back to redraw it, and it worked brilliantly.
It was pretty much smooth sailing from there. First we cut out the shapes, then, by a system of measuring angles as we went, we slowly pieced it together. We only ran into one problem, with the back pieces, that required recutting (I have no idea why it didn't work. In the model it works; in the math it works. It should have worked. but oh well, it worked in the end).
On Bayou day, we were awarded for all our hard work by the boat not sinking and not tipping over at all; in fact, it floated wonderfully (although rowing it didn't quite go so well). Spiderboat's design was one of the recipients of the "Most Creative Design" award. Hard work paid off.
