Introduction: This project required us to design a solar outdoor classroom with a budget of $3000-$5000. To do this, we had to learn the basics of heat and energy. We learned about the different states of matter (solid, liquid, gas), and how heat changes this state of matter. We learned why cold things feel cold and why copper is a better conductor. We learned where the sun appears throughout the day and why it's hotter in the summer and colder in the winter (It's because of the Earth's 23.5° tilt towards the sun) All of this knowledge would be helpful for designing our outdoor classroom. But before we could start working on the design of the classroom, we had to learn about heat transfer in depth. To do this, we built a solar water heater, using our new knowledge of heat to aid us in our project. This mini-project started out with us getting a set list of materials, of which to design our solar water heater with.
Our design:
Our design looked almost exactly like the image on the left, using a single container to hold the water as it heats up. This container was placed in a box with reflective material surrounding the box, using our knowledge of the angles of the sun to place the box at a 35° angle to catch the most sunlight. In the end, we had a competition to see who's heater was the best, our heater ended up in 5th place, heating 100ml of water 8°C. From this, we learned that we could have made our design a lot simpler by making the container made of a better conductor and painted black to absorb more heat. After this mini-project was over, we continued on our classroom by picking where it would be located. To start out, we picked out what factors we should count in towards every site and graded their importance on a 1-3 scale. Then, we selected three sites we thought we would be for the best for this, and judged them by the important factors on a 1-10 scale.
Concepts: Atom: The basic unit of a chemical element Proton: The positively charged particle that resides in the nucleus of the atom Neutron: The neutrally charged particle that resides in the nucleus of the atom Electron: The negatively charged particle that resides around the nucleus of the atom Molecule: A group of atoms bonded together. Element: The most basic building block that cannot be broken down anymore Conduction: The transfer of heat through a fluid. (solid or liquid) Convection: The movement caused within a fluid by the tendency of hotter and therefore less dense material to rise, and colder, denser material to sink under the influence of gravity, which consequently results in transfer of heat. Insulation: Protect (something) by interposing material that prevents the loss of heat or the intrusion of sound. Radiation: Emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or through a material medium.
Wind Turbine Lab: Even after doing all this, we still had more to learn, we had to learn about alternate energy sources. To do this, we started a wind turbine lab. This lab required us to build different wind turbines for both horizontal and vertical winds, we then used these initial designs to influence how we built our next designs. We then tested these designs in different wind speeds, low (a small fan's lowest setting), medium (a small fan's highest setting), and high (an electric leaf blower) Our designs were mostly for horizontal winds so we could get a better design for that type. Our first design (three blades shaped like a traditional wind turbine) generated 0.17 Joules on low 0.28 on medium, and 2.5 on high. From this design we decided to vary slightly and make the blades longer, this design ended up producing less joules of energy overall. Our next few designs were mostly the same, using the same material, but we did change the amount of blades for most of the designs. From all this data, we created a poster showcasing what we found were the best designs, and explaining why this is so with data we gained from our lab.