Project Description
The objective of this project was to make an energy efficient car for Hyundai that doesn't use chemical or nuclear energy. The car has to go 5 meters holding 250 grams. For our car, my group used elastic energy to power our car. We had about 2 weeks to work on our car with a few days that were interrupted due to other work and also to Mr. Williams receiving the Milken Teaching Award. Our car had the honor of having the greatest mechanical advantage Mr. Williams has ever seen. Because of having such a great mechanical advantage, we had to put 400 grams on our car so it wouldn't go past 5 meters.
The objective of this project was to make an energy efficient car for Hyundai that doesn't use chemical or nuclear energy. The car has to go 5 meters holding 250 grams. For our car, my group used elastic energy to power our car. We had about 2 weeks to work on our car with a few days that were interrupted due to other work and also to Mr. Williams receiving the Milken Teaching Award. Our car had the honor of having the greatest mechanical advantage Mr. Williams has ever seen. Because of having such a great mechanical advantage, we had to put 400 grams on our car so it wouldn't go past 5 meters.
Concepts
- Potential Energy (spring): How much energy a spring, or rubber band, is storing. Measures in Joules (J). We used this to calculate how much energy the rubber band car had before we released.
- Kinetic Energy: Energy due to motion. Measured in Joules (J). We used this to see how much of our potential energy was converted to movement force.
- Thermal Energy: The energy not converted to kinetic, and instead converted to things like sound and friction. Measured in Joules (J). We used this to see how ineffective our cars could be.
- Spring Constant: How difficult it is to move a spring. the higher the spring constant, the harder it is to move. We used this to help us find out how difficult, or easy, it was to stretch our rubber band.
Reflection
This was easily one of the projects you needed all the time you can get. Good things happened and also bad things happened. One of the good things was that on the first day of working on this project, we had a basic idea of how are car will look. After we built our first version of the car, it went 5 meters right away so we stuck with that car. Because this car worked, we moved onto the calculations and it seemed like we were ahead of schedule by a solid day or two. The bad thing that happened was that our car was rolling off the table so one of us tried to save it. It turns out that when he tried to save it, he accidentally snapped our wooden axle. To fix this we had to use different sized wooden skewers and this totally messed up everything. The car wouldn't go 5 meters like it use to. So we had to make drastic changes to the car until the second to last work day when it worked. What we learned was that to never be lazy just because our car worked on the first day. Anything can happen. Two things I did well was doing what I was supposed to do and I also cooperated well with my group. Two things I didn't do was at times I got really distracted and I also talked a lot. Overall, I had a lot of fun doing this project.
This was easily one of the projects you needed all the time you can get. Good things happened and also bad things happened. One of the good things was that on the first day of working on this project, we had a basic idea of how are car will look. After we built our first version of the car, it went 5 meters right away so we stuck with that car. Because this car worked, we moved onto the calculations and it seemed like we were ahead of schedule by a solid day or two. The bad thing that happened was that our car was rolling off the table so one of us tried to save it. It turns out that when he tried to save it, he accidentally snapped our wooden axle. To fix this we had to use different sized wooden skewers and this totally messed up everything. The car wouldn't go 5 meters like it use to. So we had to make drastic changes to the car until the second to last work day when it worked. What we learned was that to never be lazy just because our car worked on the first day. Anything can happen. Two things I did well was doing what I was supposed to do and I also cooperated well with my group. Two things I didn't do was at times I got really distracted and I also talked a lot. Overall, I had a lot of fun doing this project.