My partner for the magnet racer was Connor. The first thing we did before anything else was either if we wanted to build a car that we pulled with the magnetic force or push using the magnetic force. We choose the pushing method because we knew that the pulling method wouldn't go that fast even though it was easier to keep the car straight. Then we started building the car. We made the car so that the weight was distributed more towards the front of the car which would cause its acceleration to keep increasing after the initial force is applied and then taken away. To make the weight more towards the front of the car, we used bigger wheels in the back and smaller wheels in the front. We then stabilized the back wheels by attaching two metal rods to the shaft of the axel. This pretty much fixed that problem. Then we calculated the acceleration of the car. Then we found the amount of force we were using. This allowed us to find the proper mass that we needed for our car because the formula for force is...
FORCE = MASS * ACCELERATION
Test 2: Container for Camera in Space
Ashely, Aalia, and I worked as a group to make a container for the Camera in Space project. Our design that we came up with was to use two koozies that we would put together so they formed a cylinder. Later in the process we added more compartments so that it no longer looked like a cylinder but a double-sided mallet hammer. To keep the koozies together we used duct tape and packing tape. The phone and the flip camera had bubble wrap around them to keep them safe and secure so that it didn't move around inside the container. Before we surrounded those two items with bubble wrap, we popped all of the bubbles because in space, if the bubbles were still inflated, they would have eventually popped and this would've caused problems with the camera of the phone and the flip camera. We had an idea to put cardboard around the koozie container if it failed to protect the cameras alone but it was never necessary to use the cardboard because the container worked very well. When we dropped the container from the box at the top of the new gym, it passed the test! The container absorbed the shock from the impact of the fall and the cameras were unharmed. It did take us a couple of classes to fix the confinement of the cameras so that they wouldn't move one inch when the container was dropped, but we eventually secured it. In the end, we wrapped the whole container in duct tape. The flip camera was in the middle compartment. The GPS (which was the iphone) was in the middle compartment as well, and the two compartments on the sides were for either one camera and another flip camera or two cameras. The good part about our container was that it was one of the lightest containers made out of all of the other ones. This is a major factor we had to make sure to take into account for when we were building the container because if it was too heavy it would fall back down too soon and if it was too light it would've gone up too quickly which would've had a negative effect on the container.
Test 3: Balloon Racer
My group for the balloon racer was Gray and Elizabeth Oakes. At first we created a balloon racer that worked somewhat ok but wasn't too amazing. The reason for this was that we had the wheels the same height and the wheels didn't spin well in the axels because there was too much friction. After we figured out these problems with the car we started trying to fix them. Somehow we just made the car worse in the project. So that same day I went home and built a new car that worked a lot better! I made sure to make it so that the back wheels were larger than the front so the mass was focused more on the front. This would keep it rolling and accelerating even after the initial force was exerted. I also made sure to make the axels have less friction so that the wheels could roll more easily. Then I made an attachment to the car that you would attach the balloon to so it would concentrate the air more which caused the air being emitted from the balloon to be more forceful than without the attachment. This car worked a lot better than the first and got second overall in the competition.
No comments:
Post a Comment