Transforming the Box and Building the Peacock

During this week our main focus was the music. As most of the peacock had been constructed and finalised, the last parts of our project was the musical elements. We were all a bit nervous to see if the speaker and guitar strings would work. In the first lesson, our focus was to check if all the boxes would fit on top of each other and most importantly if we were able to listen to the music through the speaker. I was so fortunate to receive a speaker as a prize in the Tech Fair as we really needed one for our project.Luckily it was the perfect size!

We cut open the small gold box using scissors (I even cut my finger open haha). I connected the speaker using Bluetooth from my phone and opened the music file. The music played beautifully! We placed the speaker in the box and closed it, however the music didn't sound very clear. To solve the problem we cut out two wholes in the box and poked small wholes on one side of it. Clearly the poked side of the box will be the back side. When displaying our peacock, we will be using a school iPad and connect it to Bluetooth to play the music as I REALLY don't trust leaving my phone there is display.

In the second lesson of the week we focused on the guitar strings on the box, however we had a very big problem. We couldn't tie the strings of the guitar because they would be strong enough. Aria and I asked Ms for help but she made us realise that for a guitar to work it needed a little piece at the end where the strings were attached. Obviously we didn't have that so we had to think of another plan. Also we had already made wholes in the box so we had to come up with a solution that would cover those ugly wholes in the box.

We came up with the idea of using rubber bands, as they would have a lot more resistance in them. In addition to that Aria had the genius idea to place them horizontally, vertically and slanted to make the box look abstract. As soon as we attached the strings, our box finally looked good. The rubber bands worked and they even created sound. We poked wholes in the sides of the box and tied each end to them. In the next lesson, we are planning to stick bells on the strings to create an even stronger sound.

In the second lesson, Michail and ATM worked on the body of the peacock. We listened to Ms Jewanjee's advice and placed a metal can in the whole we made for the neck of the peacock to give it more support. I was worried the can would be too big but the whole was big enough. They covered the can with the same material we build the body with and spray painted it white. However during the process of spray painting it, the spray paint ran out and there was no more white. Fortunately though ATM had covered most of the material in white so it didn't look bad. The teacher also advised us to bring small rocks to put in the can so the head would not move and remain quite high and not sink in the can.