This week in robotics we completely dismantled the bots we took to the Oahu Regional and began building two new ones for this week's Pan Pacific Championship. As I was trying to loosen a screw that was accidentally placed in the wrong place, I realized that my new knowledge of torque came in handy. In robotics we tighten (and loosen) screws with L shaped Allen Wrenches and I first I attempted to remove the screw by holding the short end of the wrench an twisting with the long end in the screw. Sadly, I realized that the screw was in too tight and I could not get it out. Then, naturally I flipped the wrench over and tried twisting the screw while holding the longer end. This worked well and immediately after it oc
curred to me that I had just used the principles of torque to solve my problem. Torque is the product of force and a lever arm (perpendicular length or sometimes the radius), and by turning the wrench over, I got a grip on the wrench that was farther away than it had been, and therefore even though I was applying the same amount of force, I was getting more torque and was able to loosen the screw.
About ten minutes after this incident, we took the robot over to our practice field to see if it would be tall enough to knock a football down from the post that is on the field. While the robot was almost tall enough, it did not have quite enough force to knock down the ball. The ball sits on the post with a static friction force that is equal to the coefficient of static friction times the normal force exerted by the post on the ball. In order to knock down this ball, our robot would have to exert enough force to overcome the static friction and make the ball move.
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