Cold Cup Challenge

Learning Target: I can use everyday materials to design a cup that uses the best design features I know about to keep a drink as cold as the store bought cups.

Cold Cup Challenge

For our first draft, we wrapped a paper cup in tin foil and put a plastic cup inside of it, and then we put a lid with aluminum foil on top. We also put a piece of tape on the bottom to hold the cups together. We designed this cup to minimize energy transfer and maximize reflection of light.

Poster

We made this poster out of our cup. We compared results to other groups, and our cup did very well on both tests. On the regular light test, our cup had a temperature change of 0.7 degrees Fahrenheit. In the light test, the cup changed 1.2 degrees Fahrenheit. The whole cup only costs 35 cents, which is 15 cents below the budget.

Final Draft

For our next draft, we removed the tape to decrease the materials going to the landfill, and we added another layer of aluminum foil. This should minimize the amount of energy transferred even more. We added another sheet of aluminum foil, so that makes the total cost 39 cents.

Evaluation

Surprisingly, our new cup did a lot worse on the tests. This may have been because of the extra layer of aluminum foil speeding up energy transfer.

Recommendation

This is my recommendation paragraph for which cup was better.

Read it here

Reflection

This is my final reflection for this project.

What is one thing that you learned that will stick with you about this project?

I learned that heat and temperature exist at the particle level.

What was the most challenging part of this project? Which character trait did you use to overcome this challenge?

The most challenging part of this project was trying not to use over three main materials for the cup. To overcome this, we used discipline to find a way around using extra materials.

What is one thing you are proud of about this project?

I am proud of our first cup because it performed near the top out of all the cups.

If you worked in a group: What did you do to help your team succeed, and what could you have done better?

I helped come up with design features for the cup, and I did a lot of the building of the cups. I could have put more effort into my cup feature drawings, though.

Page updated

Report abuse