Labs
Throughout this project we conducted a few labs and built a solar water heater that helped us learn where and what to place the different items that we used in our outdoor classroom. The labs we conducted include a water lab, material heat testing lab, and wind turbine lab.
Water Heater
Throughout this project we also built a water heater. We designed a water heater that used two bottles, copper tube, and a plastic tube. We had half of the plastic tube attached to each bottle. We then had the other end of both plastic tubes connected to the copper tube. We had the copper tube inside a cardboard box on which we had previously cut the tope flaps off. We used the flaps as reflectors to reflect sunlight into the box. We also covered the inside of the box with aluminum foil and we covered the reflecting part of the flap with aluminum foil too. This helped reflect the sunlight into the box. We covered the top of the box with plastic wrap and this helped trap heat inside the box. The heat inside the box helped heat up the copper wire and the water running though the copper wire. We also wrapped the the two plastic bottles with plastic wrap to help keep the water warm(the plastic wrap acted as isolation). The only thing that did not work as we had planned is that we would have to switch out the bottles by hand. The reason we had to do this is because the cock that we used to keep the bottle and the plastic tube connected did not hold. Even though we had to switch the bottles by hand we still got great results.
Material heat testing lab
For this lab we chose many different materials to test. WE used heat labs to heat up the different materials for 10 minutes and let the material cool for 10 minutes. We also measured the temperature of the material every 2 minutes. If you click the button saying Water Lab it will bring you to our results of this lab.
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Wind turbine lab
For this lab we designed different wind turbines. We designed many different types of wind turbines, and from our results we were able to draw the conclusion that having pockets for the wind to catch on helps the turbine move faster. This only works on a vertical turbine. My group came up with 6 different designs. Half of these designs were similar. At first we had six pockets for the wind to catch on, but this idea did not work because we had these pockets attached to rods and these rods placed the pockets too far from the center. Another idea we designed had vertical flaps. Because we found that having pockets works better we decided to fold three out of the four sides. After we used tape to help stabilize these flaps it worked much better than we had expected. Although this idea worked, we decided to try and make a wind turbine that spins even faster. We decided to make a pinwheel. We made this pinwheel out of this metal. This worked the set out of all of our designs.
Why use less electricity?
As a class we also researched many different reasons why we should use less electricity. (If you click the button to your right you will be able to see all of our results.
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