Design Brief

        In this project I will design an apparatus which will hold a test-tube, basically as a showpiece. Even though test tubes are usually used to hold variables in science, I will be using it as a flower holder. My new boss at the company has asked me to make a flower vase, and has decided that the newest item in the store will be a test-tube flower vase. He has asked me that it has to be commercially viable, which will totally depend on my target audience. My main target audience in this project is the general female adult, because it would be the best area to sell a flower vase. This is because showpieces in stores are mostly bought by the female adult who wants to make a place look good by its presence. I’m choosing this audience because they are the ones that most commonly use vases, and it is the place where I can make the most money.

        In order to do this, I will go through a whole process which is in this project. I will start of with researching existing examples, researching materials and I will go on to survey a group of people and I will go on to use the results in order to plan my design. I will go on to create my design and then I will evaluate my whole project. Overall, I will follow the design cycle in this project to create my flower vase. The tools and materials that I will use will all come from the DT lab.

Materials Research

        

        In this project there are three main materials that we have the option to use, these being wood, metal and plastic. Below is some detailed information on all these types of materials:

Wood: Wood is a main source of creativity, because it can be shaped and even manipulated in some cases. It is a primary way of creating apparatus/tools because it used to be abundant. Nowadays, there is a threat of it becoming rare, but because it is already such a used material it is not something that is hard to stop, especially because of the reason that the universal population will never decrease over a period of time.

There are three main types of wood, namely hard wood, soft wood and man made wood. All types of wood must be seasoned before they are used, meaning that the moisture must be removed so that it is a solid.

Soft Wood:

Soft wood mainly comes from evergreen or conifer trees (right). They also come from trees like pine, cedar, fir, hemlock, spruce, yew and redwood. Softwoods are mainly softer than hardwoods; however there are some exceptions i.e. yews are much harder than hardwoods. Softwoods are categorized differently from hardwoods because of their different microscopic structures. There are two main elements that form the structure of softwood, namely tracheids and parenchyma.

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Uses:

It is the main wood source used by man, because of the variety of uses it has. Softwood is the main material construction of buildings, in furniture, in windows, in mouldings, in doors and a lot of other millworks. Also, it is used for the production of paper and is turned into man-made wood i.e.  MDF.

Hard Wood:

Hard wood trees on the other hand, mainly come from deciduous trees (right) . However, there is a group of hardwood trees that aren’t deciduous, known as angiosperm trees.  Conducted experiments show that hardwoods are higher in density ...

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