Robot Art Show

Evidence of Work:

For this project we created a circuit that detects how close you are with a distance sensor and sends that information to the lcd screen. The lcd then prints the distance in inches and says if you are too close, at a medium distance, or at the right distance. We took parts of code to make the lcd screen work and the distance sensor, but the rest we put together ourselves. Below I have attached a poor quality video of our circuit working, an image of our circuit, and a google document of our code.

Diagram:

Our Code:

Video Of Our Circuit Working:

To learn about electromagnets we made an electromagnet and changed one variable, below I have included our electromagnetic experiment. In the experiment we changed the amount of wraps of wire around the nail. We found that the amount of wraps around the nail was resistance, and the more resistance the stronger the magnet. Except to a point, we also found too much resistance made a weak magnet.

Content:

Coulomb's Law: This is the inverse square law stating that the force of attraction/repulsion between 2 static charges is proportional to their charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.

Circuits (Parallel and Series): All circuits are closed. In a simple series circuit, a battery can connect to an led and then back to the light. A series circuit has multiple pathways that the electricity goes through. This could be like our robot art show or a series with multiple lights like this.

Current: The current is different from voltage. It is the same throughout the circuit. It is the flow of electricity throughout the circuit. Measured in amps.

Voltage: The strength of electricity throughout the circuit. It is different in different parts of the circuit. Measured in volts.

Resistance: Resistance is the amount the current is slowed or resisted through an obstacle. Measured in ohms.

Power: The rate that energy is produced or absorbed in a circuit.

Ohm's Law: The voltage in a circuit is equal the resistance times the current (v=ir). This can be used to find one of the variable when you can't find something like the resistance in the circuit.

Programming/General Rules of Coding:

void setup() //this line sets up the code

void loop() //this line has everything you want the code to do, turn on light, turn on lcd, etc...

{ } //you use an open bracket at the start of the code, either in void setup or in void loop, and a closed bracket at the end

lcd.print("..."); //this is what you want to be printed onto the lcd screen. You type in what you want it to say in the quotation marks.

tone(buzzerPin, ...); //this makes the buzzer buzz, if you have it connected, you then put in the tone you want before the end parenthesis.

How an Electric Current Produces a Magnetic Field: An electromagnet can be made up of a nail (ferromagnetic material) as its core and wire wrapped around the nail. This wire acts like resistance. The wire is connected to a battery with both ends of the wire connected to both ends of the battery to make a closed circuit. The magnetic current goes around the wire down towards the end of the core. The electric field goes around the core coming out the bottom of the core and goes around the sides to the top of the core. Below is a visual representation of the ferromagnetic core. The lighter lines show the electric field and the dark lines around the nail is the wire. The dark lines with arrows are the current running through the wire and through the battery.

Diagram:

Reflection:

I think this is the best project in terms of quality of final product and how fun the project was. I learned that I actually know how to code simple code and understand what some lines of code do and how to write my own. I also learned that coding is very difficult and whenever you fix a problem, it will end up causing another problem. I am very proud with how the final project turned out. For next time, I should remember to try and help my team members understand what we are doing so they can help too. I ended up leaving one of my group members in the dust for a little bit because I wanted to get the work done. So for next time, I should make sure my team members understand what we are doing and how to do it. In other words I should be a better communicator. I also learned to make backups. For this project, we used a program called tinkercad and that is were we virtually built our circuit. A week into the project, the file got corrupted and we couldn't open our project meaning we lost all of our code and the circuit we worked on. I now know that everytime I do something, I need to make sure I have a backup. In other words, I should work on being a critical thinker by working around this problem in a smart way.