Week 5

This week, we finally decided on our transport method for the moai; we drew it out and described it in our transport draft. The transport method consisted on getting the moai on a small cart with wheels and making it move down the ramp securely. The ramp would have rails for the cart to move in the correct direction. Additionally, the cart would be secured with four strings attached to pulleys (two strings would be attached to pulleys at the very beginning of the ramp, while the other two would be attached to the end of our terrain). These pulleys would allow us to move the cart without the danger of it sliding out of control; the pulleys will allow us to control the velocity of the cart. We were quite confident on this mechanism, however, we would later have to change it a few times. In theory, it was a good method, but in practice, some of the cart's traits made it difficult for the method to work. Also, we hadn't thought out how we would get the moai on the ahu from the cart. We had thought of making a ramp from the cart, but this method didn't work, (again, due to the cart's traits - notably its bad weight distribution). We would later have to make some interesting adaptations to the transport method to get some things to work smoothly.