Chimney

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Test Plan

Because we will be building a chimney with a lift only we don't need to test to see which is better anymore.

main question

The main question of the chimney will be whether rollers or flaps are better at bringing the package down through a chimney.
This question has to be tested. And to test this we will build a chimney and install rollers one time and flaps the other.

We have started working on the chimney with the flaps first. We could not find any literature on such a system. Therefore, we decided to first just try it out. To do this we used K'nex. K'nex was chosen because it is easy to build something with, easy to make changes to and it keeps the structure open, so it is easy to see what is happening inside. We then built a model with K'nex which uses counterweights to provide the necessary resistance to the flaps. The model was also tested by dropping some heavy objects through it and the system looked promising. The model succesfully made smaller drops out of one large drop, guiding the package down relatively calmly. We even dropped a telephone through it. This model has the same functionality such a system would have in our mailbox, but we do not think using counterweights are very practical.

After some time we came to the conclusion that the flap-chimney might work pretty well. However, we quickly realised we had forgotten a very good option for transporting the packages vertically. An elevator system for the packages is the option we completely overlooked. We then quickly came to the conclusion that that would be a far better solution than the ones we had already thought of. Therefore, we have now switched our research towards elevator systems.