In this week’s experiment we dealt with the way that generators and turbines function to produce electricity. The lab that we did captured the process of electrical energy production.

Hypothesis:

In our lab we wanted to show that the more a turbine spins(or moves), the more voltage it will generate. This assumption is based on the fact that the spinning turbine which has a copper foil in the middle and is surrounded by magnets, turns mechanical energy to electrical energy. Of course, the more this process is repeated, the more electricity will be produced so we expected that the more we moved the coil the more voltage it would produce.

Procedure:
In this experiment, we had a flashlight that worked on shakes, which means that as it was shook it produced energy to power the bulb. In our experiment we shaked the flashlight 2 times per second(60 shakes in 30 seconds), 1,5 times per second(45 shakes per 30 s), 1 time per second(30 times per 30 s), half a time per second(15 times per 30 s) and 0 times. Here, we connected the flashlight to our NXT device to measure its voltage and see whether it depended on the shaking of the light. Next, we put together the data in an excel file to produce clearer results.

Data:

In the table above we can see the measurements for each number of shakes. The first thing one can spot is the existence of some negative values, which in this case indicate the direction of the voltage. What we did to eliminate the difference in direction was to calculate the sum of the squares for each column and then we took that one step further by finding the square root of the sum of the squares to get only positive values for voltage.

In the tables below you will see the sum of the squares of the columns vs the number of shakes and the sum of the columns vs the number of shakes. From the latter table we also composed our graph of the situation.

Data Analysis:

From the above data we can see that as we increase the number of shakes we are also increasing the Voltage produced. Of course, the relationship between the two is definitely not linear(as we can see from our graph, it looks more like it is an exponential function of the form x^k, where k is a constant).

Conclusion:

Our hypothesis in the beginning was that the more we shook the flashlight, the more voltage we would produce due to the theory of electromagnetic induction. As we saw in this experiment, our hypothesis was completely verified, as the amount of Voltage produced increased as the number of shakes increased. From our graph we were also able to estimate the form of the relationship of the two which is probably something like V=x^k, where k is some constant, V is the voltage and x is the number of shakes.  A way to improve the results would be by using integration, through which we could have found the exact relationship of the function, but this was not the scope of the experiment. Another way to improve the accuracy of our results would have been to have a machine shake the flashlight the amount of times we wanted, so as to avoid the human error we introduced in this series of experiments. Finally, the use of more measurements could help define the relationship between our variables even better. All in all though, this was a largely successful experiment that managed to verify our initial hypothesis.