User:Yuchen.li94/Project 1 Weekly Update

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My Instructor's course page which points to this.

Project Preference
We decide to do Escher project.

Problem Statement
We want to create a visional illusion which is against people's common sense and general physics concepts. As shown on Youtube and Canvas, people did lots of cool projects with water flowing uphill and ball going against gravity. We need to find our own way to create illusion with special filming tectonics.

Project Plan
Week 1: Finding and testing the suitable material for our project, which may be colored water, balls, cardboard, and property tools. Also, We need to have basic designs before cutting materials.

Week 2: Calculating all the angles and length and round all our calculation results to nearest tenth. Taking quiz for the permission before using the electronic saw.

Week 3: We will start to set up all the cut pieces and film it to create illusion.

Week 4: we will present the illusion film in our class and show how it actually works.

Week 1 Narrative
We have different ideas about how we going to build our "Escher structure." We came up with two different designs. One is to use only one cardboard and use the angle of column to create the illusion that balls or water will be against gravity to flow uphill. The other design is using two pieces of cardboard to create a fake reference and filming it from a particular angle. Each member in my group came up with a small and sample version of our final project.

These are my small version of my design.



Week 2 Narrative
The idea of creating illusion by two separate boards has been rejected due to the lack of material. However, by actually filming the structure, the significance of light has been noticed. Also, the corner of the background must be included in order to create the illusion of 3-D space.

Here is the basic structure.

Week 3 Narrative
A mature prototype including certain measured angles and lengths was produced. It will be used as a live demonstration in the presentation. The background of this prototype is made by two pieces of white plastic board. These two pillars are the paper roll. The 35cm board is designed by Sunny.

Improvments
1. In order to make the marble roll in a straight line, the tape is used to create a very low channel. The marble is a perfect sphere, the contact surface between the marble and plastic board is a point theoretically. Although the thickness of tape is extreme small, it is thicker than the contact surface.

2. Lighting is very important for this demonstration project. To create a relatively enclosure space, proper light can make the space more 3-dimensional. Here is a contrast between the video without and with lighting.

Video contrast

Demo without lighting

Demo with lighting

3. Becuase this project is more on the demonstration, the video should be more attractive and fun. By choosing different combinations of marbles, the video is not tedious as previous ones. (Check Youtube video links below) Single marble going uphill

Double marbles going uphill

Marbles with various size going uphill

Week 4 Narrative
In order to duplicate the visual perception on one of the Youtube videos, black background is tested in our project. Also, the tests are under two conditions - with and without light. The picture below showed that the light does not play a vital role in a black background. Although the black background help the audience focus on the white board, it cannot show the corner of the space.

For the final product, the length and angle of the two pillars were calculated. As the pictures showing below, they are working with the plastic board we planned to use before, but it may be too large to build.



Next Step

 * Shrinking the final product design
 * Finding new material for the board where the marbles roll, so the marbles will have less chance to be stuck.
 * Building the final product