Mystery Solved!

Time of Writing: 11:59 P.M.
Head Count: 5
State of Mind: OVERDRIVE

This is it: one day before the real thing. At this point, most of the teams should be putting the finishing touches and designs of their robot. Blitzkrieg, however, is another story.

The Sciborgs are not unfamiliar with rushes. The feelings of anxiety and hurry coalesce to form a heavy burden that weighs down on us, reducing high quality to who-cares-as-long-as-it's-finished quality.

Starting at 8 in the morning, we took the graveyard shift, and, man, did we discover some interesting stuff. One thing is that electricity still flows when the wires of the vehicle board touches the steel frame. This'll be important later on.

Now onto the mystery of the wiper motor. Remember how one wheel wouldn't even budge an inch when Blitz moves forward or backward? After dissecting Blitz's wiper motor, we discovered a neat little thing: whenever the wiper motor's back plating hits the steel frame, sparks fly.

What does that mean? The board test earlier proved that the frame was conductive. It could be that a defect within the wiper motor itself caused electricity to flow freely (suspect: loose plating). On the other hand, the other wiper motor was running smoothly. Here's a theory: let's say that the forward motion of the motor is caused by positive charges, while the backward motion is caused by negative charges. The reason why the spinning motion is so fast compared to linear motion is that one wheel moves forward (positive) while the other moves backward (negative), while going forward has both positive, and going backward has both negative, creating a sort of repelling action and preventing one wheel to go the distance. Fixing this conduction problem may help. If this hypothesis is true, then we have just solved the mystery of the wiper motor!

We're not out of the woods yet, though. There's still the trial of the DC motor and the conveyor belt, not to mention the actual art of Blitzkrieg. Doing them all in one night? The Sciborgs have had worse.

And that's it for the longest blog in Sciborgs history to date. Here's hoping you learned something, guys!