October 11, 2004

Hopper Project


Freshman year, for a class called Design Nature, we were tasked with making a plastic device that could jump. It had to use around 3 joules of energy or less and had to wait a second or two after being loaded before jumping. My design used suction cups for the delay and rubber tubing for the energy storage. It was designed to have minimal assembly: the pieces were cut on a laser cutter, and then snapped together.

It was the first hopper to hit the ceiling, forcing the professor to install a plastic sheet to protect the tiles.