Objective
For the hybrid car project my group of Olivia Wreden, Camille Obert, and Grace Olson decided to make a car that was powered by a rat trap. This project was really fun because we had to find out how to make a car go 5 meters and stop. For our car we used a piece of wood as the base and CD's for the rear wheels. For the rear axle we used some copper pipe and the front wheels were a pair of wheels from a Lego set.
Our Car
The main advantage of our car over all of the other cars was that ours could go backwards. It is able to go backwards because the string can be wound around the axle clockwise to go backward and if we spin the string around the axle the other way then the car will go forwards. Another advantage of our car was that it traveled in a straight line. Other cars when they ran traveled in a half circle.
Concepts
Reflection
Early in this project our group could not figure out what kind of power source we wanted to do. The first idea was that we could use balloons to propel the car. This did not work because the balloons could not hold enough air inside of it. The next idea was to use a Lego motor. The problem with this idea was that the motor was not powerful enough to carry the 250 grams that was a requirement for the car. After that we decided that a rat trap or a mouse trap was the way to go. I have had a little experience with a mouse trap car before in 6th grade, as an extra class we made projects and a mouse trap powered car was one of the choices. Now the rat trap car had its own problems. On a rat rap there are two arms that are connected to the "kill bar". Every time both arms were connected to the "kill bar" the string or the extender that we put on would break. When I told this to my dad he gave me materials to make a field goal like thing that we attached to the arms. This solved our problem great. The rat trap car was very inconsistent. Even on the day of the presentation we didn't know if the car would go to far or not far enough.
The video of our car working:
For the hybrid car project my group of Olivia Wreden, Camille Obert, and Grace Olson decided to make a car that was powered by a rat trap. This project was really fun because we had to find out how to make a car go 5 meters and stop. For our car we used a piece of wood as the base and CD's for the rear wheels. For the rear axle we used some copper pipe and the front wheels were a pair of wheels from a Lego set.
Our Car
The main advantage of our car over all of the other cars was that ours could go backwards. It is able to go backwards because the string can be wound around the axle clockwise to go backward and if we spin the string around the axle the other way then the car will go forwards. Another advantage of our car was that it traveled in a straight line. Other cars when they ran traveled in a half circle.
Concepts
- Energy- W=PE=KE, the different types on energy. Unit is Joules. Our car had a total energy of 4.314J
- Gravitational Potential Energy- PE=mgh, it is energy due to gravity, measured in Joules.
- Kinetic Energy- KE=1/2mv^2, energy due to movement, measured in Joules. Our car had approximately 0.0574J at 1 meter.
- Spring Potential Energy- Energy due to compression or expansion of an elastic material, measured in Joules, PEs=1/2kx^2.
- Spring Constant- Measure of elasticity of a spring, measured in Newton/meter(n/m), F=KX. Our car had a spring constant of 10.42n/m.
- Friction- Force that affects motion, measured in Newton's. Our car had a lot of friction because of the weight on the wheels.
- Pressure- Amount of force on a given area, P=F/A. The weight put a certain pressure on the car where they we placed.
- Entropy- disorder, heat that is lost to the environment and cant be used, randomness.
- Power- Rate of doing work, P=w/t, our car had a certain amount of power.
- Velocity- Rate of change of an object, V=d/t, measured in meters/second. our car had a velocity of O.827m/s at 4 meters.
Reflection
Early in this project our group could not figure out what kind of power source we wanted to do. The first idea was that we could use balloons to propel the car. This did not work because the balloons could not hold enough air inside of it. The next idea was to use a Lego motor. The problem with this idea was that the motor was not powerful enough to carry the 250 grams that was a requirement for the car. After that we decided that a rat trap or a mouse trap was the way to go. I have had a little experience with a mouse trap car before in 6th grade, as an extra class we made projects and a mouse trap powered car was one of the choices. Now the rat trap car had its own problems. On a rat rap there are two arms that are connected to the "kill bar". Every time both arms were connected to the "kill bar" the string or the extender that we put on would break. When I told this to my dad he gave me materials to make a field goal like thing that we attached to the arms. This solved our problem great. The rat trap car was very inconsistent. Even on the day of the presentation we didn't know if the car would go to far or not far enough.
The video of our car working:
video.mov | |
File Size: | 774 kb |
File Type: | mov |