This is a Picture of our car Mambo
This project was to create a hybrid car that traveled five meters using a different energy source than fuel or electricity. My group chose elastic potential energy or spring potential energy. We chose this idea because we believed it would be the bested for the task that played ahead.
This was one of the more difficult projects to do because we didn't have a lot of time to complete it. It was also a very big challenge due to how you had to get it at 5 meters exactly. The first thing we did with this project is brainstorm energy sources we could use. We tried one idea where two copper pipes passed horizontally through a paper towel roll. CDs were hot glued to the copper pipes and rubber bands were tied to the pipe in the front and back. You would stretch the rubber band by spinning the back wheels until the rubber band was out of slack. When you release it the wheels would turn, making the car roll forwards. One of the first problems we encountered was that the wheels didn't have enough grip. We simply fixed this by putting take on the wheels to give it more grip..The next issue with that was we didn't have the proper rubber bands. When we fixed our problems it should work right? It didn't go the complete 5 meters and instead decided to run out of energy at 3 meter .
Our second idea was to attach a wooden pole and a weight tied to a string that was wrapped around the back piece of pipe. The weight would fall and unravel the sting which rolls the car forward. This idea although sounding genius didn't work because there was too much friction. Another problem we encountered with this idea was the the weight would fall either too fast because it was too heavy or it wouldn't fall because the weight was too light. The last idea we came up with was a success. We hot glued a long rectangle piece of wood in front of the car and screwed a screw into it. A string was tied to the end of the spring and wrapped around the back pipe. when you would let go of the car the spring would allow the car to accelerate at a much steadier pace now. Unfortunately our amazing car Mambo didn't make it 5 meters because the spring wasn't as strong as it used to be.
During this project we did came upon problems with the car along with people in the group. I for one kept trying to make a front wheel to help balance the car to make it go straight but my group members didn't agree with my idea. In our group we disagreed on many different ideas so things were a little dicey up until the end result. We ended up all working well together despite or little arguments. I learned that when your group doesn't want anything to do with your idea just let it go. For the next project I will make sure to suggest ideas but if not wanted to just let it go and not care. For our presentation Bella made notecards to read off for information about the car. She also made a movie with our car rolling showing the license plate Mambo. We came up with this name when Bella was playing music and we liked this song named Mambo. It flowed well and seemed like an appropriate name for a car. The video is unavailable to post on youtube so we can not show it. the video really helped people get a better understanding of our car. Our group ended up presenting and demonstrating a good car although it didn't go 5 meters.
Concepts
Energy- capacity for doing work
Power- rate of doing work
Pressure- amount of force on a certain area
Friction- force that affects motion
Entropy- heat is lost to the environment and can't be used
Gravitational Potential Energy- energy due to height
Kinetic Energy- energy do to movement
Spring Potential Energy- energy due to compression or stretch of potential energy
Spring Constant- measurement of elasticity of a spring