Alternative Energy

Fire Away

Fire Away-Proof of Efficacy Document


In preperation for our Alternative Energy Vehicle project, we created a trebuchet. In this pre-project, we learned about and investigated spring potential energy and spring constant. These concepts helped us reach our initial goal of projecting a ball of clay as far as possible.

I feel I worked very well during this project. I was in a group where I could lead without feeling like I was doing all the work. Our group created one of the most simple trebuchets, which produced one of the most effective results. At it's furthest, our trebuchet launched the clay up to 43 meters.

Alternative Energy Vehicle

Alternative Energy Vehicle-Presentation


-Process-

At the beginng of this project, it was fairly complicated. How could you move a vehicle 5 meters exactly, without a typical energy source? Then with the help of our Fire Away project, it became more clear. Our group went back and forth between using a ramp to move the car, or another idea. The best alternative we found was to use a slingshot and move the car. We decided to try this first, but it unfortunalty didn't work. Then we built our ramp, which worked perfectly. The only problem was that the car would go past 5 meters when we didn't stop it. To solve this, we adjusted where on the ramp we released the car, and we got the car to go as close to 5 meters as possible.


Hybrid Car

Content

FIRE AWAY:

*All content can be found in Proof of Efficacy document above*


Alternative Energy Vehicle:

Rotaional Inertia: A property of how an object can be rotated. It also relates to Newton's 2nd Law of Motion that states that force is proportional to acceleration.


Alternative Energy Calculations - Sheet1.pdf

Reflection:

Something I learned about myself was that I am more of a overseer in these construction type projects. I feel I do best when I can plan things and be less hands on when it comes to the buliding. Another thing I did well was listen to other's ideas. I took my other groupmates ideas into consideration when planning our project. Something I should work on is that I tend to micromanage. Even though I am working on listnening to other ideas, I don't really like to stray far away from my idea without trying it. I am doing my best to incoorperate other people's ideas, since the variety will produce the best product possible. Our work was farily good given the limited time. We had an idea that didn't work and we adjusted our thinking to create a product that worked and worked well. The lowest point in this project was working hard on something just to watch it fail right in front of you. Once we watched our project work after weeks of hard work, it was a feeling of relief and made the whole thing worth it.