REQUIREMENTS OF ASSIGNMENT
The car company Hyundai is searching for the most fuel efficient vehicle that uses an alternate energy source. The car should have an energy storage system that allows the hybrid to be extremely enviromentally friendly, as well as affordable. The model prototype should travel and stop at a distance of five meters, be able to carry 100 pennies (250 grams) easily, and be as inexpensive as possible. Hyuandai also requires that each group deliver a short presentation to convince the company to invest in their vehicle.
TERMS TO KNOW
SPRING CONCEPT (k): the measure of how difficult it is to expand and compress the springs
spring concept=Force/distance (Newtons/meters)
POTENTIAL ENERGY OF THE SPRING (PEspring): the energy stored in a spring when it is compressed or expanded
PEspring=1/2(spring constant)(distance spring is compressed or expanded)^2 (Joules)
VELOCITY (v): rate of distance covered in a direction
velocity=change in distance/change in time (meters/second)
ACCELERATION (a): rate of change of velocity (speeding up or slowing down)
acceleration= change in velocity/ change in time (meters/second squared)
spring concept=Force/distance (Newtons/meters)
POTENTIAL ENERGY OF THE SPRING (PEspring): the energy stored in a spring when it is compressed or expanded
PEspring=1/2(spring constant)(distance spring is compressed or expanded)^2 (Joules)
VELOCITY (v): rate of distance covered in a direction
velocity=change in distance/change in time (meters/second)
ACCELERATION (a): rate of change of velocity (speeding up or slowing down)
acceleration= change in velocity/ change in time (meters/second squared)
OUR POWERPOINT
hybrid_vehicle.pdf |
OUR VIDEO
REFLECTION
I found this project to be very challenging for me and my group, but actually came together. We started with a rather complicated idea o0f having rubber bands powered by a crank that turned gears to make the car move, a rather ambitious idea that fell through rather quickly due to the difficulty of finding a way for all of those components to come together and the car reaching hardly a meter. This led to frustration amongst our group, resulting in a lack of communication and a rather negative environment. I learned a lot from this situation, mainly how to overcome obstacles logically with optimism. As a solution, our group decided to eliminate the gears element altogether and just power the car similar to that of a windup toy. This much more simple idea ended up working well, helping the car to move about three meters. We continued to improve upon the car by adding rubber bands, balancing the position of the wheels, and adjusting the crank for ideal rotations. The gradual success of the new plan led to much more positivity among my peers, truly showing me how important collaboration is to create the best work possible. With the continued work on the car, we eventually got the vehicle to travel to four meters. This was something that was a little dissappointing, considering five meters was the goal, but was definitely a huge stride compared to how the project started. However, distractions and lack of participation drastically slowed down the car's progress, an area that I believe everyone in our group had trouble with at multiple times. I hope to improve on my focus in future projects and help my group all of the time. Our car did end up being very inefficient in terms of transferring potential energy to kinetic energy, explaining the issue with the car only moved to four meters. I do believe that even though our car definitely could have been better, we managed to persevere through the challenges and create a great submission!