Alternative Energy Vehicle
In the Alternative energy vehicle project our goal was to create a vehicle that ran on a energy that does not require burning a fuel source so no gasoline or batteries. My group chose to use gravity as our power source.
The first day on the project my group and I came up with a main idea and two backup ideas. Our main idea was to use the power of spring potential energy, such as rubber bands and springs. One backup option we made was to use a ramp (gravity) and out second backup option was to use gravity again but as a zip line.
We spend a few days trying spring potential energy changing the rubber band lengths tire friction, band stretching, platform length and it wouldn't work because the axles were not straight enough with hot glue so we spent a while removing all of it and replacing it with nails to make it move in a straighter line.
When we were changing the axles to be straighter we also changed the vehicle to be a lot lighter and removed the wooden poles to hold the axles away from the body so the rubber bands could have room to get wrapped around the axle. since the wooden poles were messing with the symmetry we had to remove it and so then there was no room for the rubber bands to wrap around so we used our backup plan and got a ramp.
Content:
Green - total energy
Orange - thermal energy
Yellow - potential energy
Red - distance
X axis- time
x-axis = time
y-axis = acceleration
x-axis = time
y-axis = velocity
calculations:
PE= (m)(a_g)(h)
PE= (0.725kg)(9.8m/s^2)(0.55m)
PE= 3.9J
equations
KE= (1/2)(m)(v)^2
TE= Total energy - PE - KE
Total energy = potential energy at top = 3.9J
a= v/t
v= d/t
Key=
PE= potential energy
KE = kinetic energy
TE = Thermal energy
a = acceleration
v = velocity
a_g = acceleration due to gravity(on earth) = 9.8m/s²
h = height
m = mass
J=joules
calculations for each half meter
during this project I think that I could have worked a little bit harder so I could make it work with rubber bands and that I could have worked better with my group mates at the beginning because during the beginning of the project we were a bit disoriented. Aside from that I think that I did a good job with coming up with backup solutions because if we hadn't come up with that then we would possibly have not finished, and another good thing that happened that the group was a lot closer when the project was done than when it was at the beginning.