The Hybrid Car. A unique and innovative car created to be environmentally friendly and efficient. That is what we have created. The task at hand was to create a small vehicle that could carry 100 pennies a distance of 5 meters, but the car could not use gas or electricity, but rather a different source of energy. The greatness of our vehicle was measured in closeness to 5 meter mark, the speed, cost efficiency, and our sales pitch to Hyundai. The idea was that we made vehicle prototypes and were presenting them to buyers to try and get our car to become the new car on the roads. Of course our cars were much less complex than real cars, but we still learned a lot about cars and how they work in the process of the project. The first few days of our project, we spent time deciding on a model and creating a blueprint. Our initial blueprint compared to our final blueprint changed so much in the end and was not the same car at all. We found that simpler can be much better. after tweaking our car a lot, we came to the final product. We tested it several times and changed things to make it better. By the last day we had a well working car and we began working on our presentation(find slideshow below). Our presentation slideshow consisted of blueprints, graphs, and a little bit of humor too. We verbally explained our car and showed it working.
The hybrid car we came up with was named Echo. It consisted of the springs of a mouse trap connected to string, which was connected to the back wheel. The way it works is the string is wound up around the wheel while the spring is pulled taut. Then, when you remove your hand from the spring, the spring retracts and pulls the string with it, which turns the wheel. Once we had this car working, we needed the car t0 go exactly 5 meters. We were able to change this by the length of the string and by making the place the string was connected to the spring, farther away from the actual spring. This caused the string to have to go a greater distance which means the wheel turned a greater distance. The spring pulled back was our potential energy and each meter we calculated a new potential energy from the position of the string. The kinetic energy was the potential energy transferred. So each meter we found the kinetic energy which was the spring in motion. These are represented in our graphs, on our presentation slideshow.
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Terms and Concepts
Potential Energy: the energy an object has due to its position at a height in a gravitational field. We used potential energy for when the entire car was all wound up and waiting to be released.
Spring Potential Energy: The energy stored in a spring when it is compressed or expanded. We used this for each time the car hit a meter in distance and the spring now was at a different height, having a different potential energy.
Spring Constant: The measure of how difficult it is to expand or compress the spring. The spring constant was measured before the car was released and it told us how much force the spring had.
Kinetic Energy: The energy an object has due to motion. This was the measure of the car moving from meter to meter in real time.
Thermal Energy:The internal energy an object has due to the kinetic energy of its atoms and/or molecules.
Momentum: The tendency of objects to keep moving meaning, how hard it would be to stop. This was used to see how well the car would work in real life situations.
Impulse: How long and forcefully something is impacted or pushed. Impulse was how long the car continued to move after the final amount of spring potential energy was used up.
Velocity: The rate of covered distance in a direction. This was to see how far the car went over each meter and how it changed from meter to meter.
Potential Energy: the energy an object has due to its position at a height in a gravitational field. We used potential energy for when the entire car was all wound up and waiting to be released.
Spring Potential Energy: The energy stored in a spring when it is compressed or expanded. We used this for each time the car hit a meter in distance and the spring now was at a different height, having a different potential energy.
Spring Constant: The measure of how difficult it is to expand or compress the spring. The spring constant was measured before the car was released and it told us how much force the spring had.
Kinetic Energy: The energy an object has due to motion. This was the measure of the car moving from meter to meter in real time.
Thermal Energy:The internal energy an object has due to the kinetic energy of its atoms and/or molecules.
Momentum: The tendency of objects to keep moving meaning, how hard it would be to stop. This was used to see how well the car would work in real life situations.
Impulse: How long and forcefully something is impacted or pushed. Impulse was how long the car continued to move after the final amount of spring potential energy was used up.
Velocity: The rate of covered distance in a direction. This was to see how far the car went over each meter and how it changed from meter to meter.
Reflection
During the course of our project, we had to think about many factors to make sure our car was the best it could be. Because our car worked almost perfectly, I felt we did a good job of collaborating. We all thought up new ideas and new ways of testing the car, and even though our car completely changed, a few times, we were still able to finish it all in time for the deadline. I learned that I really enjoyed voicing my opinion about how to fix things and I overall really liked this project. It was complex to build the car, but fun to do and to test.
Although this project turned out really well, I feel we could have worked on organization. When it came down to the final day of the project, we were still working on the car and still needed to write up our presentation. We needed to have better time management and be more organized on who does what. Individually, I feel I could work on empathy for my teammates. Although for the most part it was fine, I tended to get a little irritated when someone wouldn't do something or was a bit off task. I definitely could be a little more encouraging and thoughtful when asking someone to do something.
During the course of our project, we had to think about many factors to make sure our car was the best it could be. Because our car worked almost perfectly, I felt we did a good job of collaborating. We all thought up new ideas and new ways of testing the car, and even though our car completely changed, a few times, we were still able to finish it all in time for the deadline. I learned that I really enjoyed voicing my opinion about how to fix things and I overall really liked this project. It was complex to build the car, but fun to do and to test.
Although this project turned out really well, I feel we could have worked on organization. When it came down to the final day of the project, we were still working on the car and still needed to write up our presentation. We needed to have better time management and be more organized on who does what. Individually, I feel I could work on empathy for my teammates. Although for the most part it was fine, I tended to get a little irritated when someone wouldn't do something or was a bit off task. I definitely could be a little more encouraging and thoughtful when asking someone to do something.