The task for this project was to pick a problem facing the world and try and solve it. While other groups actually researched real problems like infrastructure and food supply, we picked the most first world problem in existence. Tangled earbuds. While it may not be the most important problem in the world, it certainly seems like it to a teenager. However, we still managed to do successful research on how and why they tangle. And while it's not completely preventable, we found the best possible way to keep it from tangling.
Our Process of Designing it: We came up with a new design for earbuds and did a little bit of background research on how they can harm your ears to back up parts of our design. First, we completely ditched the shoe string wide cable and used a thicker black cable. We also changed the shape of the wire from circular to triangular because, through our research, we found that circular things want to tangle more often. Making it thicker and changing the overall shape had a huge impact and rarely did it ever get twisted or knotted. Going back to the dangers of earbuds, we also decided to change the shape of the "bud" itself. While normal Apple earbuds are shaped with the speakers blasting sound directly into your ear canal, which can lead to hearing loss. Ours is designed so it doesn't blast right into your ear. The length was also changed. Making the wire shorter resulted in less wire to potentially get tangled. Here are some pictures below of our brand new design.
This was definitely one of my favorite projects that we've worked on this year. I felt that our group had really great chemistry and we actually got a lot of work done. It was because of this that we were able to take a relatively silly idea and manage to actually do good legitimate research on it. It was a very smooth process and we never ran into any kind of difficulties. I learned that I can actually be really motivated when I'm working with the right people. I learned that about my teammates as well. Overall, definitely one of my favorite projects and I really learned a lot.