Hybrid Car Design
STEM Marin's third project of the year was to design and create your own hybrid car. The guidelines were to create a car that uses stored Potential Energy and transfers it into forward Kinetic Energy. You could use any potential Energy except for chemical and nuclear energy. The car had to carry a mass of 250 grams and travel exactly (or as close as) 5 meters. Then we had to figure out how cost efficient our car was and create a 3-5 minute presentation on our car.
What We Did
For this project, my group consisted of Cole Weber, Nick Radcliffe, and myself. In the beginning of this project, we first decided on what type of potential energy we should use. After coming up with some ideas, we decided to make the actual frame first and then apply the most convenient potential energy to it. While looking around the STEM class room for supplies, we were able to find some 1x1's, a large wheel, a dowel, and two wooden wheels. From there on, it was construction. After building the frame, and analyzing it, we decided that the best potential energy was going to elastic energy. We again looked around the classroom and were able to acquire 3 springs. We then duct taped them together and create one long spring. Next, we tied some string around the axle of the large wheel. Then we attach the string and began testing our car.
The first few tests ended in failure, either snapped string, the car only went about 1 meter, or the single spring snapped back into separate strings. But after a lot of trial and error, we were able to perfect the distance that the car traveled. After that, we create a power point and were all set to present our hybrid car.
Concepts
Velocity - speed with direction. Is measured in meters per second squared.
Acceleration - is change in velocity divided by time.
Potential Energy - is the amount of energy an object has at rest. It is found by by multiplying mass, the force of gravity, and height.
Kinetic Energy - the amount of energy an object has in motion. It is calculated by multiplying mass and velocity squared, then divided by two.
Spring Potential Energy - is the amount of potential energy that a spring can hold.
Spring Constant - the stretchablitly of a string. The higher the constant, the more PE it can hold, and vice versa.
Reflection
I thought that my group worked very well together. We were able to get the project completed in a timely manner and worked very efficiently together. Spring Potential Energy and the Spring Constant were two new scientific things that I learned about. Although I had heard of them before, I had no idea what they were and it was cool to finnally figure out what they were. Something that we could have done better was to practice the presentation more and done better on the presentation. Our presentation was a little rough and we could have fixed that by going over it more and making sure that Cole, Nick, and I all knew what we were doing. One hard spot that we had in this project was finding the right string. It took us few days to find a string that would not break when we pulled the springs all the way back. Other than that, I thought that our project was fantastic.
What We Did
For this project, my group consisted of Cole Weber, Nick Radcliffe, and myself. In the beginning of this project, we first decided on what type of potential energy we should use. After coming up with some ideas, we decided to make the actual frame first and then apply the most convenient potential energy to it. While looking around the STEM class room for supplies, we were able to find some 1x1's, a large wheel, a dowel, and two wooden wheels. From there on, it was construction. After building the frame, and analyzing it, we decided that the best potential energy was going to elastic energy. We again looked around the classroom and were able to acquire 3 springs. We then duct taped them together and create one long spring. Next, we tied some string around the axle of the large wheel. Then we attach the string and began testing our car.
The first few tests ended in failure, either snapped string, the car only went about 1 meter, or the single spring snapped back into separate strings. But after a lot of trial and error, we were able to perfect the distance that the car traveled. After that, we create a power point and were all set to present our hybrid car.
Concepts
Velocity - speed with direction. Is measured in meters per second squared.
Acceleration - is change in velocity divided by time.
Potential Energy - is the amount of energy an object has at rest. It is found by by multiplying mass, the force of gravity, and height.
Kinetic Energy - the amount of energy an object has in motion. It is calculated by multiplying mass and velocity squared, then divided by two.
Spring Potential Energy - is the amount of potential energy that a spring can hold.
Spring Constant - the stretchablitly of a string. The higher the constant, the more PE it can hold, and vice versa.
Reflection
I thought that my group worked very well together. We were able to get the project completed in a timely manner and worked very efficiently together. Spring Potential Energy and the Spring Constant were two new scientific things that I learned about. Although I had heard of them before, I had no idea what they were and it was cool to finnally figure out what they were. Something that we could have done better was to practice the presentation more and done better on the presentation. Our presentation was a little rough and we could have fixed that by going over it more and making sure that Cole, Nick, and I all knew what we were doing. One hard spot that we had in this project was finding the right string. It took us few days to find a string that would not break when we pulled the springs all the way back. Other than that, I thought that our project was fantastic.