Fire Away/Alternative Energy Vehicle
Trebuchet Calculations:
Mass of our projectile: Our projectile is made out of clay with a string attached and the mass of it is 0.003 kg.
Horizontal Distance: The distance horizontally is 20 meters.
Time in Air: The time of air was how long the projectile was in the air which stretched to 27 seconds.
Vertical Distance: The distance vertically is 5 meters.
Horizontal Velocity: The velocity horizontally is 5.4 m/s squared.
Vertical Velocity: The vertical velocity is 1.3 m/s squared.
Initial Spring Potential Energy: The potential energy of the initial spring is 19.8 Joules.
Kinetic Energy of the ball: The kinetic energy of the ball is 0.406 Joules.
Spring Constant: The spring constant is 9.8 n/m
The angle of Release: The release angle is 19 degrees.
Percent Energy Converted: The energy converted is 9 percent.
Total Velocity: The total velocity is 30.85 m/s.
Our task was to create a car that rolled 5 meters and had to transport two rolls of pennies. We were not allowed to use chemical or nuclear energy. Our Vehicle was very complicated to make and took a lot of trial and error. We used a rubber band to work as a spring constant that we attached to a nail and winded it back to make the car move. It was put together using pieces of wood, rubber bands(Spring Constant), hot glue and used PVC pipes wood, and metal axles using music discs as the wheels for the car. It had a lot of errors throughout the project. We switched from using rubber bands and using a mouse trap eventually deciding on using the rubber bands. The wheels were crooked to the point they would instantly go in the wrong direction instead of rolling straight. Sometimes the wheel would come out of the car entirely and we would have to hot glue it back on. We used a piece of wood attached to a nail to get the spring constant more distance so the car would go faster. But it resulted in putting too much weight in the back and not enough in the front which we fixed with a smaller piece of wood attached to the nail and by moving the rolls of pennies out to the front causing even distribution. The wheels ran into each other constantly. We did get it to a point that it would go 3-4 meters even with those problems. But after constantly making adjustments we did get it to go exactly 5.1 meters. We were good at finding different ways to fix our problems and not giving up. We tried to quickly get the solutions to our problems. We had problems with trying out the same idea hoping it would work instead of fixing the problem at hand. We could've gone faster considering the time constraints which put us behind on our calculations.
Reflection:
On the Trebuchet portion, we did pretty well. We did get to a goal of 16 meters which is not the exact goal of 20 but is very close to that. It was pretty functional on all accounts. We did suffer from the fact that our trebuchet went in a wacky design eventually to the point we had to rebuild it from scratch. I played a very supporting role in cutting some pieces of wood to build the trebuchet, helping with some of the final calculations, and finding pieces of wood and other materials to use. I also assisted with measurements, drilling, and hammering in some equipment. I also helped with shooting and tracking the projectile and made the graph on our poster
Alternative vehicle: While our vehicle did take a lot of time to complete we did reach the goal of the car going 5 meters with 2 penny rolls in the car with the car going overall 5.1 meters. It took more time than some other groups causing us to be behind in our graphing and calculations while we did finish them. We met all the requirements using a spring constant and most importantly not using chemical or nuclear energy. In this project, I helped get materials for the car, filmed the videos, did some calculations, and helped with drilling and hammering things.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AMKi7ohssjVyDwWrK_EbCVzDpHFbtv2XsgCqqAZvWkY/edit#gid=0
The graphs contain the content for the alternative energy transfer project.
Our slideshow contains other content;