As you can already tell, our project was to build a hybrid car with a new form of energy. At first, this sounds relatively simple, but there were some constraints. We couldn't use chemical reactions for our energy source, and we also couldn't use any sort of current technology to power our car. As well as these constraints, we had to document the cars performance and make graphs with them, such as velocity vs. time, and potential and kinetic energy graphs. To make our car, we had three planning days, nine days to build and take down data about our car, and finally, three days to work on a sales pitch and presentation for our car/ cars. Though we could have built only one car, each one of our three people worked on separate cars, which caused us some timing issues with finishing our cars.
As far as our cars, we came up with two final designs., the Snapper Mk II and the Windwaker. The Snapper Mk II ran on two mousetraps that would pull a long wooden arm to unravel string wound around the back axle, causing the back wheels to turn. Our other car, the Windwaker was run on compressed air, the air container was a SodaStream bottle with a thumbtack at the front holding in all the air, also releasing the air out of a small area. We also had a third car in planning that ran on a propeller, but this car wasn't strong enough to carry the amount of weight our cars had to carry. In the end, our presentation included the two cars, and their performance graphs. In our sales pitch to our class, The Snapper Mk. II went four and two-thirds meters out of five meters and the Windwaker went one and one-half meters because we hadn't put enough air into the car.
Concepts Kinetic Energy-The energy an object has due to it's motion: we often found the kinetic energy of both the cars, for example, the kinetic energy of the Snapper Mk.II- KE=1/2*.544kg*(1.145m/s)^2, KE=.356J Elastic Potential Energy- The amount of energy stored in a spring or elastic thing by pulling or pushing it. For example, we found the potential energy of the Snapper Mk.II by using PE=1/2*3240N/m*.017m^2 , PE=.422J Pressure-The force over a given area. This was crucial for us to find the potential energy of the WindWaker, using the formula PE=p*v, in which PE=.156 J Velocity-The rate of covered distance in a direction. For both of our cars, we calculated velocities at each meter, e.g. v=1m/1.493s, v=.67m/s
Presentation
Refection
I don't really know how to describe this project, because it didn't go terribly, but it also wasn't the best we could do. We started off on a pretty good foot, with our plans set within the first few days, and we thought that we could have gotten all cars done within our time frame. From here on out, things started to go to hell, with the propeller not working, and our compressed air car being quite unpredictable and at some points not even at school. There was a time period where just one person was working on the mouse trap car, because it was the only car available, from this I now know to be more focused on the project. During this project, I learned that I actually cant focus on the project if one of our group members is not doing anything, instead I tried to get them to do work instead of doing my own work. From this, I want to work on focusing more in my next group, trying my hardest not to go off task at all. Finally, I learned that I should have been more possessive of my car, not letting others take it from me for the whole project, which is what happened. Besides this, we had some great moments in our project. The first was that the three of us got a lot done on Sunday, the last day of break, including pretty much the entire presentation and car data, and also a lot the first time we met up at Collin's house, where we got the compressed air car working. Another was the fact that we got a week-long extension, which basically saved our skins and enabled us to put out a much better presentation than that of the one we had on Friday, but we probably shouldn't be too reliant on that option anymore.