The assignment was to build a Hybrid car that could move 5 meters and stop by itself. To add on, not only did it have to travel 5 meters, it also had to carry 250mg. The members of my group for this project were Madi Jones, Colin McCloskey, and Julia Corbani. This project was very hard and we had made many models before we made a final decision.
In our project, our car was powered by a rubber band. To make it go, we had to wind up the rubber band a certain length, the wound up rubber band was storing the potential energy. Once we let go of the rubber band, it would start rolling a certain length, depending on how much we wound the rubber band.
This project really focused on velocity, acceleration,time, and both potential and kinetic energy. If you look at our Power Point presentation, you will see graphs showing the connections between all different elements with the car.
Velocity: speed with direction
Acceleration: increase in speed
Time: how long it takes the car to get from one place to another
Velocity: speed with direction
Acceleration: increase in speed
Time: how long it takes the car to get from one place to another
Reflection:
I think this was a very fun and difficult project. We have made about 7 cars before we got our final model. At first we wanted it to be balloon powered, but later realized rubber bands worked petter. I like my group for this project because my friends were in it and I think we worked great together. 2 good things about our group is everyone participated and everyone worked hard to help with making the car. 2 bad things about our group is that I think we talked of topic about it and we didn't have that great communication between each other outside of class. Over all I liked being able to make a car out of CD's, a cereal bow and rubber bands.