VII. Group Reflections

1. We are trying to address the sustainability of energy. This is a global issue as burning fossils fuels and using natural gases to generate energy is non-sustainable and is harmful to the environment. Hence, our experiment is trying to harness the most energy using a sustainable method, which in this case are solar panels. This experiment focuses on the angle of light on the voltage output of the voltage meter. From our experiment, we found out that when the position of light is directly on top of the solar panel, the highest amount of solar energy is produced. Thus for this experiment, the trend is, as the angle of light increases, the voltage output of the solar panel increases also.

Kyle: Our team has managed to make use of the technology around us. For example, I had a 3d printer that was put to use for the support holders for the solar panel. Not only that but we also managed to get our hands on a high tech voltage meter which gave us accurate readings of the voltage output from the solar panel. During the 3d printing process, it was a difficult journey as the gantry did not line up, or the height was not leveled properly. This caused me to be stressed out. However i did all that was needed and redid the instructions and all in all managed to work it out.

Tristan: I feel that our team through this ISS journey has contributed a lot of our own personal time to this project. I feel that in this project, I have learned a lot about being effective in my tasks and keeping on the right track. This especially resonated with me since at the start of our ISS project, we were the last group to come up with a finalised idea as we had many iterations of what we wanted to research on, but those were either too easy and predictable or they had no actual real-life application. Ever since that incident happened, all of us have been contributing a lot in our own little ways to help out in the ISS project, Kyle 3D printed a custom made 3D model for our group, Sairam supplied us with the solar panel, and I helped out by completing quite a bit of the report. I feel that through this journey, I have learned a lot about personal effectiveness and have greatly strengthened my skill in that field.

Sairam: In my opinion, our team had managed to get out of some desperate situations that we had earlier. During the proposal stage, we had a topic which we could not properly write about, and so we were in a desperate situation. Do we stick to the same topic and find out what experiment we can do? Or do we change topic, but have to do the proposal as fast as possible. We decided to go to the second option, since we were unable to get a proper proposal ready. However, by the time we had managed to get our new topic, we only had one day left for our draft submission. Gathering all of our time and brain cells, we managed to complete the full proposal within 6 hours. If we did not work together, there would have been no way that we could have even done well for this project in the first place, even for the rest of the deliverables.

3. Through this experiment, we managed to bond with each other as we did our work effectively. Not only were we able to do our work quite effectively, we also laughed and joked around and also constantly helping each other when challenges arise.