Madame Lucy
The Amazing Fortune-Telling Goose
Natalie Levinson '09 & Christina Miller '08

Wing Motion and Construction

Lucy's wings circle together over the crystal ball.

The Process:

Construction
The concept was taken from a motion module presented in lab. When the motor runs, Lucy's "wings" turn forward and backward in a lazy circular motion over her crystal ball. The motion module we used as a model had a large gear fastened directly to the motor; that gear had a peg through one of the inner holes, and then the peg connected to an axle. When the motor turned on, the axle ran between two pegs, creating the forward-backward motion. We made two modules on either side of Lucy's lego frame and used a gear train to connect them to the same motor. With a little cardboard, glue, and feathers, these eventually became Lucy's "wings."

The lego construction underneath the wings.

The cardboard wing skeleton.

Code
At first, the turning action was way too fast to safely add props to the frame, such as cardboard and fabric. We geared down the motor and this did a great job of creating the effect of slowly stroking the crystal ball.

Here are the sections of our code that related to wing motion:

to stroke-ball
            wing-motor on thisway wait 90 off
end

to wing-motor
            b,
end