Wire Walker project

[gabo7]

Hi, for my physics class I was assigned to make a wire walker. Basically it's a device that is able to ride a wire with 1 motor and a AA battery as fast as possible. I've thinking about some different ideas that I could develop to make the motor as fast and stable as possible but none of them seem impressive or reliable enough.

One of them is a have a motor and a wheel, balanced someway with a AA battery by the other side, and maybe a string with something down so it balances better?

The second idea is to create a device with maybe two wheels that use as method of propulsion a fan, which wouldn't be very efficient, but it´s just and idea.

Thanks a lot! And I'm sorry if this is not the ideal forum to post this.

 

[crutschow]

A fan or propeller should give you a lot of speed if you can get enough thrust to overcome friction.

Could you just suspend the fan, motor, and battery from the wire using a small pulley such as a clothes-line pulley?

 

[SABorn]

I dont know if this will be fast enough, but a very novel item i seen in a cafe was a teddy bear that rode a bike along a high wire.

It was a very simple design with 1 motor, the bike was not powered and it worked on gravity, one end of the wire was attached to a wall with a swivel joint, the other end was attached to a arm on a motor, as the motor turned slowly the wire would be raised as the arm went to 12:00 oclock and the bear would ride the bike backwards, and as the arm came around to 6:00 oclock the wire would be lower then centre and the bear would ride his bike forward.

It was very simple and enjoyable to watch, most importantly the kids all shut up and watched the bear.........Ahrrrrr... coffee in peace and quite.

Pete.

 

[birdman0_o]

I had the exact same idea as crutschow. I feel as if turning a pulley to move wouldn't have enough friction, and lots of energy would be lost with the pulley slipping.