For this project my group was tasked with making a car that runs off of alternative/unconventional forms of energy. We had to make the car be able to go 5 meters and stop on the spot and it must also carry 250 grams of weight while it goes. We also had to create a presentation that showed performance graphs of out cars and also generally tried to sell our audience on the cars. We decided to attempt to create three cars and do the presentation on which one worked the best and most consistently. As you can see above we only ended up finishing two of the cars, The WindWaker and the Snapper Mk.2. The third car would have been called the blade runner and would have operated on a propeller based system with the propeller being moved by rubber bands. This car was not able to carry enough weight and move 5 meters so we scrapped the idea early on.
The first car to make the final cut was The WindWaker which is named after a installment in the zelda video game franchise. It is named such because of how it functions. It's chassis is made out of plastic pens hot glued together with wheels on the end, it also has a large SodaStream bottle attached to the chassis via rubber bands. We drilled a hole in the cap of the bottle and placed a car tire valve inside that fit the cap's hole perfectly. We then drilled in a tiny hole in the cap for the thumbtack to go in. The way it works is you take an air pump and hook it up to the car tire valve while the thumbtack is in and fill the bottle with air. Once you are happy with the amount of air inside you place the car on the ground facing away from where you want it to go and simply remove the thumbtack, the air inside comes out of the thumbtack hole as the pressure in the bottle equalizes and it propels the car forwards.
The second car we made is called the Snapper Mk.2. This car is named such because it is the second design for the car we came up with. We originally attempted to make the car with mouse traps but when that did not produce enough power, we upscaled to rat traps which are a lot larger and a lot stronger. The way the snapper works is that the two rat traps are hooked up to a large wooden arm that is attached to the back axle by a string. So you rotate the back axle backwards, pulling the arm back and also setting the rat traps. Once it is sufficiently wound, simply let go the rat traps will then pull back the arm that unravels the string, rotating the back axle and moving the car forwards.
Concepts Used:
Velocity: This is the speed at which an object moves in a certain direction. We found the velocity of the Snapper to be 1.145 m/s at 3 meters and the velocity of the WindWaker to be at .66 m/s at 3 meters.
Elastic Energy: The amount of energy produced by an elastic object like a spring or a rubber band. For the Snapper we found the Elastic Energy to be 0.422 Jewels
Pressure: The amount of continuous physical force exerted on an object. We used this to find the Potential Energy of the WindWaker which was 0.156 Jewels
Reflection: This project was definitely a tricky one, we had to learn and adapt quickly to the problems in our cars and believe me there were plenty of those. One of our biggest problems was once again, time. We had to get an extension just to finish the project. We worked very hard as often as we could but even so, we struggled to get the cars ready on time. I definitely learned some new things during this project. I learned that getting something to be airtight is not an easy feat and I also learned that more hot glue is not always the answer to my problems. All joking aside I did learn how to calculate air pressure and how to figure out potential energy using air pressure. I was not exactly the best teammate when it came to calculations. We had to do all of our car calculations over thanksgiving break and even thought I was sick when we did them, that is not exactly an excuse not to help more which I will work towards doing better in the future. Another thing that I did poorly was working on the Snapper. I mainly focused my efforts towards the WindWaker and more or less neglected the Snapper. Even though our tactic of dividing and conquering did work out for the best, I still could have dedicated more time towards the second car. All in all this project was probably the most fun one to date and I look forwards to our next project.
The first car to make the final cut was The WindWaker which is named after a installment in the zelda video game franchise. It is named such because of how it functions. It's chassis is made out of plastic pens hot glued together with wheels on the end, it also has a large SodaStream bottle attached to the chassis via rubber bands. We drilled a hole in the cap of the bottle and placed a car tire valve inside that fit the cap's hole perfectly. We then drilled in a tiny hole in the cap for the thumbtack to go in. The way it works is you take an air pump and hook it up to the car tire valve while the thumbtack is in and fill the bottle with air. Once you are happy with the amount of air inside you place the car on the ground facing away from where you want it to go and simply remove the thumbtack, the air inside comes out of the thumbtack hole as the pressure in the bottle equalizes and it propels the car forwards.
The second car we made is called the Snapper Mk.2. This car is named such because it is the second design for the car we came up with. We originally attempted to make the car with mouse traps but when that did not produce enough power, we upscaled to rat traps which are a lot larger and a lot stronger. The way the snapper works is that the two rat traps are hooked up to a large wooden arm that is attached to the back axle by a string. So you rotate the back axle backwards, pulling the arm back and also setting the rat traps. Once it is sufficiently wound, simply let go the rat traps will then pull back the arm that unravels the string, rotating the back axle and moving the car forwards.
Concepts Used:
Velocity: This is the speed at which an object moves in a certain direction. We found the velocity of the Snapper to be 1.145 m/s at 3 meters and the velocity of the WindWaker to be at .66 m/s at 3 meters.
Elastic Energy: The amount of energy produced by an elastic object like a spring or a rubber band. For the Snapper we found the Elastic Energy to be 0.422 Jewels
Pressure: The amount of continuous physical force exerted on an object. We used this to find the Potential Energy of the WindWaker which was 0.156 Jewels
Reflection: This project was definitely a tricky one, we had to learn and adapt quickly to the problems in our cars and believe me there were plenty of those. One of our biggest problems was once again, time. We had to get an extension just to finish the project. We worked very hard as often as we could but even so, we struggled to get the cars ready on time. I definitely learned some new things during this project. I learned that getting something to be airtight is not an easy feat and I also learned that more hot glue is not always the answer to my problems. All joking aside I did learn how to calculate air pressure and how to figure out potential energy using air pressure. I was not exactly the best teammate when it came to calculations. We had to do all of our car calculations over thanksgiving break and even thought I was sick when we did them, that is not exactly an excuse not to help more which I will work towards doing better in the future. Another thing that I did poorly was working on the Snapper. I mainly focused my efforts towards the WindWaker and more or less neglected the Snapper. Even though our tactic of dividing and conquering did work out for the best, I still could have dedicated more time towards the second car. All in all this project was probably the most fun one to date and I look forwards to our next project.