Hybrid Car
For this project we built a functional car that uses an alternative energy source. Some of the energies used by other groups include solar and compressed air. My group decided to use rubber bands. We decided to use rubber bands because we knew that they would have enough energy to make the car go 5 meters. To get our car to work you simply face the front of the car away from you and wind up the rubber band 10 times towards you. Next you add 300 grams of weight(equally distributed) to the back. Finally you set it to the ground and let go. We spent the first couple of days designing and building, but we spent most of our time redesigning.
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Concepts
Potential Energy (Spring)- Energy stored in spring. We found the energy stored in our rubber band.
Kinetic Energy(KE)- Energy due to motion. We used a video of our car working to determine the KE at each meter. To calculate this we used the equation KE=1/2mv^2.
Spring Constant(k)- Rigidity of spring.
Thermal Energy- Internal energy of an object due to its KE.
Velocity vs. Time- As you can see on our Velocity vs. Time graph our car gains velocity at the beginning and then looses it towards the end.
Acceleration vs. Time- As you can see on our acceleration vs. Time graph our car gains acceleration at the beginning and then looses acceleration towards the end until it slowly start decelerating and then stops.
REFLECTION
On the first few days our group came up with different ideas as to what our alternative energy source could be. We then decided using a rubber band and spent the next few days designing and building this idea. After we finished building we tested it and unfortunately it did not go 5 meters. We spent the next couple of days redesigning and testing our car until it finally went 5 meters. After we finally got it to go 5 meters we started facing a new problem. This problem was that our rubber bands kept snapping. We solved this by replacing the old rubber band with a new rubber band. Throughout this project I learned drawings can help explain different ideas. During this project I could have stayed on task a little more but in the end we were one of the first groups to get our car to work.
Potential Energy (Spring)- Energy stored in spring. We found the energy stored in our rubber band.
Kinetic Energy(KE)- Energy due to motion. We used a video of our car working to determine the KE at each meter. To calculate this we used the equation KE=1/2mv^2.
Spring Constant(k)- Rigidity of spring.
Thermal Energy- Internal energy of an object due to its KE.
Velocity vs. Time- As you can see on our Velocity vs. Time graph our car gains velocity at the beginning and then looses it towards the end.
Acceleration vs. Time- As you can see on our acceleration vs. Time graph our car gains acceleration at the beginning and then looses acceleration towards the end until it slowly start decelerating and then stops.
REFLECTION
On the first few days our group came up with different ideas as to what our alternative energy source could be. We then decided using a rubber band and spent the next few days designing and building this idea. After we finished building we tested it and unfortunately it did not go 5 meters. We spent the next couple of days redesigning and testing our car until it finally went 5 meters. After we finally got it to go 5 meters we started facing a new problem. This problem was that our rubber bands kept snapping. We solved this by replacing the old rubber band with a new rubber band. Throughout this project I learned drawings can help explain different ideas. During this project I could have stayed on task a little more but in the end we were one of the first groups to get our car to work.