Introduction

Good day, people! Today I am going to tell you about my innovation day project. We were asked to build a castle with a mechanical/working drawbridge. I will also tell you about the middle ages (Medieval Times).

Castles

If there’s one thing I know about castles, they are really uncomfortable. There were a lot of kings, queens, and nobles who lived in castles. Castles provided protection. There were also safe areas to store weapons and food supplies. The first castles were just wooden forts to keep soldiers safe in enemy territory, but after they started building castles made of stone. By today’s standards, life in a castle wasn’t very nice. Castles were cold and gloomy. Castles are designed to have protection and not comfort. A lot of castles only had a few rooms. There was a great hall, a kitchen, and two or three chambers/rooms for the lord and his family. No bathrooms, just a tiny alcove that jutted out of the castle walls. The contents of the toilet emptied into the moat or a pit. Imagine how bad that would smell! Castle walls would sometimes enclose a chunk of tiny buildings. Here is a picture of a medieval castle.

 

 

Fun Facts!

1. Did you know that castles had their water supply within the walls? I didn’t realize it until now!
2. Did you know that some castles had moats? Moats are trenches filled with water.
3. Did you know that in medieval times, people would chew food for the king to eat? Gross!

 

The Feudal System

I have a question for you. What was the feudal system aka feudalism in the middle ages? I knew you couldn’t answer that. I’ll answer that for you. The feudal system aka feudalism is a type of social system in which landholders provide land to people in exchange for their loyalty and service.

 

 

 

How Does The Feudal System Work?

The feudal system was the medieval model of government predating the birth of the modern nation-state. It was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries.

 

 

Lords And Serfs

Lords and serfs are basically opposites. A lord gets a lot of respect while serfs are on the streets. The lords are at the top of the feudal system and the serfs are at the bottom. Lords can sit back and relax while the serfs have to work really hard for money and dinner on their plates.

 

Planning booklet

We needed to plan for how to make the working drawbridge, so Ms. M gave us planning booklets so we could learn about pulleys and gears and plan how to make our drawbridge. There were different sections in the booklet. Pulleys, gears, drawbridge planning, castle designing, and a checklist for our blog post. Here are some pictures from my booklet.

 

 

What Are Pulleys?

Pulleys are wheels that carry a flexible rope, cord, cable, chain, or belt on their rim. Pulleys are used singly or in combination to transmit energy and motion. There are two different types of pulleys. Fixed pulleys and movable pulleys. If there are two or more pulleys, it will become a pulley system. The more pulleys you put in a pulley system, the less weight you carry.

 

 

What Are Gears?

gears are wheels and axles that have teeth along their wheel. They are primarily used in combination with one another and change the direction of forces. The size of the gear determines the speed at which it rotates. Gears are mainly used to increase the force or speed of a machine.

This is a picture of a gear system.

 

How Do Pulleys And Gears Work?

Pulleys are made by looping a rope over one or more wheels. They are mostly used to lift heavy objects or weights. pulling down on one end of the rope creates an upward pull at the other end. Looping the rope over more wheels increases the upward force.

Gears are wheels with teeth that slot together. When one gear is turned, the other one turns as well. If the gears are of different sizes, they can increase the power of a turning force. The smaller wheel turns more quickly but with less force, while the bigger one turns more slowly with more force.

 

 

Hypothesis For Innovation Day

We were asked to make a castle with a working drawbridge from the middle ages/medieval times. I thought that I would use a gear and it would be connected to the castle. I thought the gear would be connected to a pole/skewer and a rope connected to the pole/skewer. I would use the rope and attach it to the drawbridge, but my group and I had to use two gears on each side and attach a piece of cardboard to each side so we would be able to keep the gear and pulley system steady.

 

 

Procedure

Here is a video of me, Livia, and Nikki’s procedure:

 

Final Results:

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it to Innovation Day, but I heard it turned out to be absolutely fabulous!

Self Assessment:

WWW (What Went Well?)

In my opinion, the pulley and gear systems in the castle were impressive.

What Could I Have Done To Make It Better?

I feel that the interior and exterior could have been improved.

 

 

Thank you for reading my blog post! Bye!