In this project, we were assigned to create an alternative energy car that ran and stopped at exactly at 5 meters. My group and I created a successful solar powered car that completed the required 5 meters.
Here is a video of our car going the full 5 meters:
Here is a video of our car going the full 5 meters:
We started our project with blueprinting an alternative energy car. An alternative energy car is a car that is powered by something other that gasoline. Our alternative energy source that we decided on was solar energy We named our car Helios, after the original sun god of the greek pantheon. The early designs for Helios included a frame made mainly of wood, with lego axles. We originally were using an incandescent flashlight to power our car and we would just turn off the flashlight at 5 meters, but we realized that if this design were applied to real life, you would need to turn off the sun in order to stop the car, so we created a new design. this time, we built Helios completely out of legos, with a rod protruding out of the end that slowly moved backwards, breaking the circuit at 5 meters.
Here is a video of our car's braking system:
Here is a video of our car's braking system:
As you can see in the video above, the rod moves a wire away from a penny, opening the car's circuit and causing it to stop. We measured the rod to have to protrude about 21 centimeters for it to stop at 5 meters.
The graph below is our speed vs time graph. As you can see, it accelerates at the beginning, and maintains a constant speed of 0.5 m/s for 10 seconds,, and stops at meter 5. It keeps this speed because it has a constant energy supply from the sun.
The graph below is our speed vs time graph. As you can see, it accelerates at the beginning, and maintains a constant speed of 0.5 m/s for 10 seconds,, and stops at meter 5. It keeps this speed because it has a constant energy supply from the sun.
In the next graph, it shows our energy conversion. our potential energy remains the same because even though it is all being converted to kinetic and thermal energy, the sun is a constant energy source, so it is constantly replacing the energy being transformed into other forms of energy.
Reflection:
All together, I think that this project was successful in multiple ways. Not only did our car work, but it also brought me closer to my classmates. One thing that my team members and I did well was collaborate. One day, one of my partners was sick, so we FaceTimed him in the middle of class so we could work together on our presentation together. We also worked productively. We had to completely start over on our car, and we were still one of the first groups to finish. We could have improved on making sections of our presentation shorter. We could also work on collaborating outside of school. we were planning a day to go to a group member's house to work on Helios, but we didn't plan it well enough and it turned out that we were all busy that day.
Here's a link to the presentation: