Our Hybrid Car
For this project we had to make a hybrid car that didn't rely on gas and wasn't from nuclear energy that went as close to five meters as possible. There were numerous choices of cars that we could have done. They varied from springs to batteries to rat traps, to even a hammer. Our group and some others chose to do a water powered car, and we started to build. After many days and hours of blood, sweat, and mostly tears, we got our car to basically go five meters. Meanwhile the groups that did water powered stopped, meaning we were the only group that stuck with a water powered car and effectively completed the task at hand. We finally had to come up with a sales pitch for why our car is so great, and present its greatness. After all that the project was over.
Here are some of the physics that went on and was presented in this project:
Gravitational Acceleration: This played a huge role on our project, since it was water powered. Gravitational acceleration is what it sounds like, the acceleration that gravity puts onto an object. In our project gravity put acceleration onto the water when it fell onto our "Water Mill" which turned the orange axle on the big wheels.
Potential Energy: Potential Energy, or PE, is the energy that something potentially has, before its used. Our project had PE from the water. When it sat there before released it had PE and later would turn into KE.
Kinetic Energy: Kinetic Energy, or KE, is the energy something produces. In the projects case, the water was the PE and when it was released it created KE for our car.
Thermal Energy: In a perfect world there would be no friction, but we don't live in one. Thermal Energy is the energy released from heat, like friction. Our projects had large PE that we turned into KE, but not all the energy was transferred. Some of it turned into Thermal Energy, from friction.
Acceleration and Velocity: Acceleration and velocity both refer to the speed of an object. However, acceleration takes into account slowing down as decelerating, or negative acceleration. Velocity just shows the speed at any given time. Our velocity started slower, picked up, then dropped again. The acceleration started at the peak and constantly decelerated.
Distance: Distance is how far something went. For our project we made a distance versus time graph. The graph started off with a high distance in short times, and then flattened to more of a straight line, where it went a low distance over more time.
Reflection: This project was a massive process. We had a lot of trial and error for our car. We made a prototype that didn't go at all. Then we had to keep making new adjustments, find the error, and make more trials, until we got the best prototype we could have. In addition we also learned about time management. Our group didn't do the best at that, and we ended up having to work at home on the project. I think we did really well at finding all the problems and making solutions, and communicating what we should do and how to do it. We didn't do too well with our time and we were off task a good part of the time. I learned a lot from this project and hopefully i can improve the negatives for next time.
Here are some of the physics that went on and was presented in this project:
Gravitational Acceleration: This played a huge role on our project, since it was water powered. Gravitational acceleration is what it sounds like, the acceleration that gravity puts onto an object. In our project gravity put acceleration onto the water when it fell onto our "Water Mill" which turned the orange axle on the big wheels.
Potential Energy: Potential Energy, or PE, is the energy that something potentially has, before its used. Our project had PE from the water. When it sat there before released it had PE and later would turn into KE.
Kinetic Energy: Kinetic Energy, or KE, is the energy something produces. In the projects case, the water was the PE and when it was released it created KE for our car.
Thermal Energy: In a perfect world there would be no friction, but we don't live in one. Thermal Energy is the energy released from heat, like friction. Our projects had large PE that we turned into KE, but not all the energy was transferred. Some of it turned into Thermal Energy, from friction.
Acceleration and Velocity: Acceleration and velocity both refer to the speed of an object. However, acceleration takes into account slowing down as decelerating, or negative acceleration. Velocity just shows the speed at any given time. Our velocity started slower, picked up, then dropped again. The acceleration started at the peak and constantly decelerated.
Distance: Distance is how far something went. For our project we made a distance versus time graph. The graph started off with a high distance in short times, and then flattened to more of a straight line, where it went a low distance over more time.
Reflection: This project was a massive process. We had a lot of trial and error for our car. We made a prototype that didn't go at all. Then we had to keep making new adjustments, find the error, and make more trials, until we got the best prototype we could have. In addition we also learned about time management. Our group didn't do the best at that, and we ended up having to work at home on the project. I think we did really well at finding all the problems and making solutions, and communicating what we should do and how to do it. We didn't do too well with our time and we were off task a good part of the time. I learned a lot from this project and hopefully i can improve the negatives for next time.