Kinetic project team members
- Shuainan Yang
- Shinnosuke Komiya
- Shirley Wu
+ husband as unofficial fourth member who gave mechanical suggestions and feedback.
We started out with Shin's idea of using water and swirling it to generate energy. The idea of residual waves generating energy was interesting, but determined that it'd most likely not generate enough electricity to power LEDs.
The idea of water led us down a rabbit hole of tabletop steam engines and I was particularly enamored with the idea of using fire to light LEDs.
We tried to brainstorm other ideas, look at past class projects, but we kept coming back to the steam engine. Eventually Shuainan proposed that we brainstorm a concept and have that guide our components and aesthetic.
We talked about how candles and fire are often used in Chinese and Japanese culture as offering to loved ones that have recently passed, and also how we light lanterns and float them on water to make a wish. So we came up with the concept of lighting a candle for a wish that floats up to the sky and lights up the stars (where the stars are powered by LEDs):
In preparation, we also bought a stirling engine off Amazon so that we wouldn't have to worry about making a steam engine from scratch and concentrate on the motor and LEDs.