Work | zachary-allbritton

Featured Work

This page will be where I showcase some of the work I am most proud of and/or have put a lot of effort into. They serve as great examples of the Project Based Learning projects that High Tech High does for all classes and subjects.

/work

Mechanical Representation of the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

This project, also dubbed Apocalypto, was a project that would demonstrate different theories for the rise and fall of civilizations, that would apply for both those in the ancient past, and the possible future. Each one of these theories would be then visualized with a specific mechanism designed around that theory. These mechanisms would then be arranged around a large central gear.

As the Machinist of my five-person team, I was in charge of all design and fabrication aspects of our mechanism. I first would sketch designs for the mechanism, make constant improvements, then begin the virtual design process. I made the gears virtually, calculated how far apart the gears needed to be functional, then layed out the design on Adobe Illustrator. All spacers, aesthetics and text were all then created and implemented into the design. Using a laser cutter, I then cut out the parts on quarter-inch wood. Finally, the assembly was able to come together.

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Handmade Remote Control Boats

Hydrodynamics. They're very interesting and complex at the same time. Having to get an object to float and maneuver in a specific way on liquid requires considirable effort. This project revolved around creating a R/C boat without using a pre-made hull/drivetrain. Which means we needed to create a hull from scratch.

My role was to effectively come up with an effecient design that boosted speed and maneuverability performance. To do something like this, drag needs to be minimalized. That means a more streamlined shape with as little of the hull in the water as possible. After making a hull shape, I had to make a mould for a plastic company so that we could get a plastic hull casted. Once this task was completed, the final steps were to make all the wiring for the antenna, speed controller, and the motor secured. Finally, the whole hull had to be sealed off and woterproofed so the internal electronics would not be compromised.

Experiments on Mutant Plants

Every wondered how certain aspects of plants function? What makes the plant behave as it does? In this project, we dove deep into plant genetics their functions. The plant in particular was a weed called Arabidopsis Thaliana, which is commonly used in botany labs nationwide.

Me and my partner were assigned a gene called CHS. This gene regulates how the plant reacts to its environment. We obtained seeds of a mutated version of Arabidopsis that had its CHS gene turned on, and seeds that had not been tampered with. We planted these seeds in seperate pots, and exposed one of the wild type plants (those that had not been modified/mutated) and one of the mutant plants to UV light. One wild type plant and one mutant plant were left in a normal daylight situation. We took observations each day after sprouting and compared the differences until the end of the project.

Writings and Art on the Origins of the Cosmos

Where do we come from? That is one of the questions we focus on in this project. Whether it be life itself, or ourselves as an individual. We delve into the realm of science, ideology, mythology, and art. We studied the origin of life through genetic variables and heredity, the science behind it all and how it happens on the molecular level. We created mythologies based on our scientific topics, dubbed as origin stories. From these stories, we put together illustrations from specific scenes in our stories using a technique called papercutting.

All this was exhibited at the San Diego Public Library in Downtown San Diego.

Zachary Allbritton