The Build

To build this was very simple and that's what allowed us to become so productive on this project. Due to its simple design we were able to know instantly what was wrong and how to fix it.

We first started with designing the car we knew in order to get 5 meters the easiest way would be to have a rolling vehicle on wheels and axles then we started thinking about how we could move the axle we began thinking of rubber bands and got to work on the frame of our project we started by getting PVC pipe and cutting and measuring so that the axle would fit nicely inside and not too tight or else it would rub. Next once we found our axle we worked on mounting it the axle after attempting to hot glue it on the glue broke and we went back to the drawing board. After finding zip ties we mounted the axle using four zip-ties which still haven't broke. Next is was time to choose wheels this would be very important because of rotational inertia we knew the bigger the wheels diameter the harder it would be to get spinning but it would also be able to coast a lot further than a smaller wheel we finally chose two big wheels that would be filled on the inside that way less of the mass is on the outside allowing an easier rotation of the wheel. On the front end of the car we mounted two small wheel because these would just be spinning with the car and not be driven so we therefore would need less rotational inertia because we needed these the car to start moving as fast as possible or else we wouldn't be able to make the 5 meters while coasting.

Build part 2

After Thanksgiving break we still didn't know how we were going to power our vehicle forwards until we came up with a mouse trap. We realized that a mouse trap was spring powered and could hold a lot of PE the bigger the spring so we set out to get the biggest mouse trap and got to work on a rope that would snap under a lot of force from the spring we then drilled a hole into our axle and wrapped the rope around multiple times so that when the spring pushed forward it would unwind the rope around the axle this caused the axle to spin which got our car moving forwards. 5 meters later our car would slow to a stop and we completed our goal of making an alternative energy vehicle.

Calculations

mass of car=1.5kg

average velocity=0.348 meters per second or 0.77mph

spring potential energy=1.41

gravitational potential energy= zero because of the car being right above the floor

Kinetic Energy= at 5 meters 0.2028

Total Energy= 1.41 joules

Thermal Energy(energy lost due to friction )= at the end of the run at 5.18 meters it was 1.41 joules