It is the first few weeks of the second semester of my senior year of high school and I have looking forward to what it has in store for me. For the PLTW (engineering) program, we are going to choose a problem and produce a, hopefully, working prototype that is able to successfully tackle the problem; it is called the Capstone "year long" project. We only got a few months, which is actually a decent amount of time, so we are going to take our time to do it right and encounter as little problems on it as possible. Also, I am going to be visiting a Neumont, the college I am most likely to go to, and see what they have in store for their possible incoming freshman. Getting back to the Capstone project, my group is facing a challenge of deciding exactly what problem we believe will be a better choice to pursue. I am fine with either of the two options, but each of my two group mates want to do one idea over the other; they both have a different opinion. Once we end up choosing our final problem to fix, we will end up getting slowed down by deciding exactly how we will try and solve the problem.
For the Capstone project, we need to research about products that are made for profit and ones made to benefit others. The products that are made for profit may be mass-produced, but the overall quality of the products may not be the best it can or should be, especially because the prices that those products are sold at. Products to benefit others usually have a higher overall quality at a lower price, sometimes being sold at a loss. When it is benefiting others, the business may use the money made to make more of their product and it may be easier to come by when more is made. Pros for a product made for profit is that it is usually easy to come by, but sometimes at a price. There are sometime companies that will 'cut corners' when making the products and that drastically reduces the quality of the product and potentially the products lifespan. Apple is an example of a company that make phones for profit; their phones are built for about $300 to $400 and then sold for a multiple of the cost. The items made for the benefit of others have some pros; for example, the products are easy to use and able to be used almost anywhere. A con for theses types of products is that sometime the companies will make and donate their products at an overall loss. One product that is built to benefit others is called the XO Laptop. It is used by poor communities that need to help to give children a more comprehensive education. Products for profit or for the benefit of others both have their places where they are used or sold, profit products are also used to get money to flow around the economy.
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