Alternative Energy Unit
Evidence of Work
Our task was to build a Alternative Energy Vehicle that travels for five meters and stops exactly on the meter mark. To help understand alternative energy more we first made a Trebuchet with rubber bands. This project helped me and my group better understand alternative energy because it gave us a different way of thinking rather than going with a more traditional view of coming up with ideas. We used this understanding of Alternative Energy to brainstorm on how our group could build a vehicle that goes the five meters and stops on that meter mark. Our solution to this problem became our mousetrap car.
With a mousetrap as our power source we had to find a way to get that wound up power to transfer to an axle to make the wheels spin and get the car moving. Our solution to this minor problem was to use a string that goes from a long wooden dowel end to an axle made out of wood. This axle is very thick and fits neatly with our CD wheels. At first the holes the CD's had was too small and couldn't fit onto the wooden axle. To ensure that the CD can fit and stay on the axle we filed the inside of the CD's hole to the perfect diameter that then fits snugly on the axle. One of our biggest problems during our build of the vehicle was getting the car started and this was because the car had to carry two rolls of fifty pennies that were very heavy. This weight made the car almost impossible to go at the start. We believed that the problem was the wheels not being able to grip the slippery floor so we attached a single rubber balloon to each wheel for extra grip.
The last steps in our project was to find the best way to maximize our distance in our car. We had to fix this distance problem because our vehicle only went three meters. One way we experimented with our distance was to move the pennies to a more secure location versus from having them loosely on top of our machine. So to solve this we moved the pennies to the bottom of our car and taped them to be more secure. Another way we used to maximize our distance was to trim the size of our car because there was lots of excess wood. This excess wood causes extra grams that contribute to the machine minimal distance. With all these steps and adjustments to our vehicle is was able to go three and a half meters.
Content
- Spring Potential Energy
Spring Potential Energy is the Energy that the mousetrap has stored inside itself when it is wound up. This energy is released and is transfers into Kinetic Energy and Thermal Energy.
- Gravitational Potential Energy
Gravitational Potential Energy is the Energy that the Earths Gravitational Pull has on each object and Human. This Energy was not in our favor when we made this mousetrap car because the Gravitational Pull makes our car heavier and harder to start.
- Kinetic Energy
Kinetic Energy is the Energy that an object have due to the objects motion. In our project Kinetic Energy is represented in the Wheels being unwound and starting to spin to make the vehicle move.
- Thermal Energy
Thermal Energy is exerted when two objects rub, slide, or collide with each other. This rub, slide, or collision results in friction that creates heat. When our wheels spin they rub on the ground and create heat. This is one area that we lost energy.
- Total Energy
When you add Kinetic, Thermal, and Potential Energy together you will always get the Total Energy. As you can see above and to the right our Total Energy is our blue bar in the second graph.
- Velocity vs. Time
The Velocity vs. Time graph represents the spike of Velocity in the begging and then the slow decrease in velocity as time goes on.
- Distance vs. Time
The Distance vs. Time graph shows you that as time goes on the more time you have the farther your car will get.
- Rotational Inertia
Rotational inertia is a property of any object which can be rotated. It is a scalar value which tells us how difficult it is to change the rotational velocity of the object around a given rotational axis. In our project the wheels uses rotational inertia to our advantage because when our vehicle starts it is harder to stop.
Reflection
My group throughout this project worked together really well because we supported each others ideas while scrutinizing them at the same time. We used our time very wisely but we wanted to try so many things so we couldn't use our time to maximize our distance. Instead we tried out of the ordinary ideas but sadly none worked and we ended up with a machine that didn't go as far. Although our car didn't go that far we still worked with each other with empathy and cooperation.
Even though we worked with empathy and cooperation we could always improve our work ethic. Although our work ethic was on the high end of the spectrum I personally feel like we as a group we could've used our small bits of time more productively. An example of this was one group member would be off task because he or she didn't have a job to do. Instead we could've created more things to do to improve our machine.