Saving the Earth: One Blog at a Time

Project By: Bobby Garces, Christopher Rabelo, Mandar Patel, Julius Hahr

 

Objective:

1. Investigate the law Work = Force*Displacement
2. Investigate how different color filters affect the car’s motion

Procedure:

1. Place the color filter of your choice on the solar powered car (tape will help).
2. Place the solar powered car at a starting location of your choice and hold it in place.
3. Place the light source a set distance directly overhead the toy powered car
4. Release the toy car, without moving the light source at all. Record the distance travelled by the car.
5. Collect a total of 3 trials per color filter in order to minimize error from outliers and other factors
6. Repeat steps 2 thru 5 for each color filter.
7. Finally, using the NXT and the light intensity sensor, place each color filter over the sensor and place it the same distance away from the light source as the height above the car you placed the source during the experiment.

Color	Light Intensity (klx)	Distance 1	Distance 2	Distance 3	Average Distance

 

Post Experiment Questions:

What relationship did you find between the light intensity and distance the car traveled?

How did the colors filters affect the distance? Any relationship between color and distance?

My group and I went to two different high schools to make presentations. The first we went to was the John D O’Bryant High School. At first I was admittedly nervous because I did not know what to expect from the students at this school. From what I had been told it was an engineering/physics class. So I was afraid to present something that I didn’t believe to me that complicated to students who might have already done the work I have done. But at the end I was glad they knew so much, even for 9th graders. The presentation itself went by normally, everyone presented their parts, we showed off the solar cars, and gave our conclusions on the presentation. The best part came afterwards. The students were very interested in the projects and asked many good and thoughtful questions. For such young faces to throw question after question to me and my partners, it made my whole experience very worthwhile knowing I had peaked interest in many of these students. Actually conducting the experiment with them was even better because of even though I asked some of the students if they were interested into going into engineering and hearing “No”s as answers, they were still involved and interested in my project. They liked learning how light can make a car, even a very small one, move. There was one student, unfortunately I never got his name, that was very involved and kept asking me question and wanted to help hold the light source, place the car, all of that. Getting at least one student interested to that level was exciting. I didn’t expect the students to be that interested in what I have to say, when I was in high school, especially that young, I just wanted to get out of class. But all these kids at the O’Bryant restored my faith in the younger generation.

I won’t say much cause there really isn’t much to say, but going to Charlestown High school  was a big disappointment. I presented by myself to I think it was 3 kids, who I doubt payed any attention to what I had to say. Compared to going to the O’Bryant, Charlestown high school was a complete waste of time. I know it was not Dr. Shatz fault, she expected a larger crowd as well. We were all let down by that school, so much though that not all of us even presented.

Overall I had a great time with the experiment, and hope to be able to travel to high schools in the future and be able to influence future high school students to pursue a career in engineering.

Steps

1) Put filter on car

2) Set car on starting line

3) Place light source set distance above car

4) When ready to begin trial, release car

5) Measure distance traveled, repeat 3 times in total

6) Using NXT measure light intensity for each filter

7) Repeat for each filter

 

Color (filter)	Light Intensity	Distance 1	Distance 2	Distance 3	Average Distance
yellow
green
blue
red
No Filter

 

We had many ideas, and being very overzealous, along our brainstorming we were even considering building a hovercraft that that would fly using sensors and be powered through solar energy. Needless to say, that plan fell through very quickly. We went through many other possible ideas, some being similar with only minor differences, and some completely different ideas. Here are some of the ideas we were considering:

• Magnet/Transformer Generator
• Fruit Power
• Building Solar panels
• Building a Wind turbine
• Build a motor
• Remote control car, runs on solar or wind
• Solar Powered hovercraft
• Catapult
• Hovercraft Sensor

Our decision was based on price, our resources, and time to build. As much as I would have love to build a hovercraft that runs on solar power, the price to make one out of good material that would be durable could be expensive. But also it could take a long time to make it, and considering we have 3 weeks to get all the materials, build the device, test it to make sure it works properly, and then run the actual experiments, and then prepare the presentation. It would all take too long.

 

Our final decision was a final combination of a few of our ideas. We are going to build a solar powered toy car. This seemed like the most reasonable and doable device we could build. Once we had an idea we then had to decide how to build it. Our final decision was to order a few inexpensive kits to build solr powered cars, because it would be more durable than making our own makeshift cars out of plastic bottles or whatever else we could use.

With our solar powered toy cars built, we will finally be able to proceed with our experiments. Our experiment will have 2 parts: Toy Car Velocity vs Light Intensity and Toy Car Velocity vs Color Filter. In addition to the experiment, one of my intentions for the project overall is to demonstrate how useful solar energy can be, and that with advancing technolgies, rather than powering a toy car with solar energy, we will be able to power real cars with solar energy.

 

Part 1: Car Velocity vs Light Intensity

How we plan to complete this part of this experiment isn’t too difficult. Once the toy car is built we will use a light intensity meter to measure the cars velocity. The way that will be completed is setting a fixed distance, and then timing how fast it covers said distance, thus allowing us to calculate a velocity. The light inesity meter will allow us to read the strength of the sunlight, and from there we will be able to plot them against each other, and then anaylyze the data to give us a correlation between the two variables.

 

Part 2: Car Velocity vs Color Filter

This part is even easier because all we have to do is attach different color filters over the solar panel to convert the sunlight from white light to other color. The reason for this being to see what color solar panels pick up the best. We did an experiment like this in class, but my reasoning for doing this with toy cars is because comparing the effects of color filters to a cars velocity is a lot easier to grasp and understand than some numbers that our outputted on a computer program. It is a visual aid versus just giving data. Once we plot velocity vs color on a bar graph, it should give us some type of bell curve or some other correlation so that we can determine which wavelength is truly the best for solar energy.

On November 4th we were lucky enough to be able to visit the Nuclear Reactor at MIT. Our day was split into two parts, the first being a lecture of the history and many features of the Nuclear Reactor. The second part, which was the coolest field trip I have taken in awhile, was actually getting to see first hand, a real nuclear reactor.  Something that has so much potential for science, that has been in our city decades, I have never visited, until this day.

Upon arrival we were greeted by a huge white encasing. Which is the home for the nuclear reactor. To get in we had to be rung into a building attached to the nuclear reactor where we were required to give state issued identification. They need to monitor everyone in the building for safety reasons, and to prevent thivery of any radioactive material. Also part of the check in was being given a device that reads our radioactive exposure, so in the case we leave, and our exposure has gone up to significantly, they would need to take the necessary steps to ensure our health. Even though we are naturally exposed to small amount of radiation in our everyday life, of course in a nuclear reactor exposure would be higher. After dropping off our bags and phones, we were taken to the lecture.

The lecture portion was an interesting to start off with, but to be completely honest the way it was delivered in such a boring and monotone way that I, and many other classmates, were literally falling asleep during the lecture. I was trying very hard to pay attention because the actual material seemed somewhat interesting learning how a nuclear reactor works. But I just could not stay awake, I apologize to our lecturer.

To get into the nuclear reactor room we had to go through an air sealed hallway. We were finally led into a larger chamber, the white dome, that is the home to the nuclear reactor. From the inside it looks so much more massive than how large it looks from the inside. Our tour guide was awesome because it related much of his discussion to popular culture, such as Fallout. He explained how the nuclear reactor isn’t actually used to produce electricity because it would do a very poor job at that, instead they use the thermal energy they produce in order to do many experiments and much research. Just as an example, they can use the reactor to identify any type of element/material. It can do much more complicated stuff that I can’t even begin to comprehend.

 

Finally we got to go to the control room, where it looks like something out of a sci-fi movie with hundreds of different switches and buttons, a bunch of monitors, and the technician who is over watching the entire operation. He has to make sure that every is going according to order, and if there is any issue he is the one who has to fix it.

In order to better understand the way solar panels work, we must understand how different factors affect it. What we focused on in this project is different light filters and light sources being different distances to the light source. Different colors of light have different wavelengths, which is why different amount of voltages were produced with different colors.

No light	light (1 cm)	light (10 cm)	light (15 cm)	Blue (1 cm)	yellow (1 cm)	red (1 cm)
-0.1045	0.0238	0.10078	0.07512	0.0238	0.31889	0.35738
-0.15582	-0.05318	0.11361	0.07512	0.17776	0.30606	0.24191
-0.1045	0.26757	0.10078	0.06229	0.16493	0.29323	0.24191
-0.13016	0.37021	0.1521	0.04946	0.20342	0.2804	0.25474
-0.13016	0.31889	0.10078	0.1521	0.22908	0.35738	0.22908
-0.14299	0.33172	0.08795	0.07512	0.25474	0.31889	0.34455
-0.14299	0.29323	0.19059	0.11361	0.26757	0.33172	0.25474
-0.13016	0.34455	0.08795	0.12644	0.20342	0.29323	0.25474
-0.13016	0.35738	0.17776	0.1521	0.20342	0.29323	0.2804
-0.14299	0.39587	0.1521	0.1521	0.20342	0.34455	0.34455

 

Our voltage versus filter color contradicts some of our original opinions about the correlation between the two. What we must know is that different wavelengths have different energy levels, wavelengths that are too short will pass right through a solar cell, but wavelengths that are too long will not have enough energy to ‘excite’ the electrons in the solar cell to produce energy. What we expected was lower wavelengths to produce the most energy because they have the most energy, but the result was the opposite. From our results we determined that the best filter color is between yellow and red, so a wavelength of anywhere between 600 nm to 700 nm. The larger we get, the small the voltage would be produced because the wavelengths are getting to large to power the solar cell. According to our data as well, no color filter is actually less than the yellow color filter which is surprising because we would expect white light to produce the most energy because it is the same as the sun.

Voltage versus distance is pretty self explanatory. The larger the distance between the light source and the solar cell, the smaller amount of energy that will be produced. This is because light spreads out as soon as it leaves the source, but the amount of light does not change. So as the area that the light covers grows larger, the amount of light per a certain area also gets smaller and weaker.

Iran Nuclear Energy Plan

Iran isn’t exactly a ‘friendly’ country for anyone who lives in the USA. So the thought of Iran using Nuclear energy can be frightening. Even though they never claim that they are building nuclear weapons, there has been much suspicion against that claim, however. After many threats and disputes against Iran’s use of nuclear weapons and the enrichment of uranium, the dispute was finally settled. On July 14th, limits were set on the amount of work that the Islamic State could perform on their Nuclear Projects. As an example, they were given a limit to how enriched they could make their Uranium, this of course preventing them from creating anything too pwerful, which if used as a weapon could be devasting for the entire country, and perhaps even worse.

 

Why did Iran feel the need to create nuclear weapons in the first place? Well, dating all the way back to 1984, Iran was in a war with Iraq, and fearing that the Iraqi leader was developing nuclear weapons, Iran felt the need to also create their own weapons of mass destruction in order to defend themselves in the eventful situation that they were attacked by nuclear weapons. The first Nuclear plant began construction in 1975, but due to a revolution happening at the time in the country, the development was stopped. Then in 1995 Russian and Iran signed a deal to finish building the plant, and until this day it is up and running. But since the first plant, Iran has built, in secrecy, other nuclear plants which have the capabilities to create nuclear weapons. This is a reason why there was much dispute and eventually a restricition on Iran’s Nuclear development. They have lied and hidden important secrets from the world. So no one trusts them anymore.

 

Iran continued to try and develop nuclear weapons. In 2011, they said they were getting close to a breakthrough in their project, and this only scared people more. Through the next 4 years until July 14th, 2015, Iran encountered numerous hardships and opposition in their development of nuclear weapons. The US congress said that Iran could not be trusted, and many agreed. No deal would have offered Iran the ability to develop nuclear weapons, some supporters even say a war could have broke up if they were allowed to do so.

 

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-G-N/Iran/

http://www.bloombergview.com/quicktake/irans-uranium-enrichment

http://www.iranintelligence.com/program-history

 

Faraday’s Law

Technical Definition: “Faraday’s Law states that changing magnetic fluxes through coiled wires generate electricity (currents and voltage).   The greater is the change in magnetic flux, the greater are the currents and voltages.  In this lab you will be shaking a tube which has a magnet that will travel back and forth through a coil of wires.  You will show that the faster you shake the tube, the greater will be the generated voltage.”

Simplified Definition: Faraday’s Law states that changing the magnetic flux through a coil produces electricity. So the faster the conductor passes through the coil, the greater the change in flux, and the more electricity that is produced. FASTER SHAKE equals MORE ELECTRICITY”

Our data was set to increasing the amount of shakes over a fixed amount of time, 30 seconds. In other words, we increase the speed at which the conductor passes through the magnet. The final value is the sum of voltages gathered throughout the trial.

0 shakes	30 Shakes	64 shakes	90 shakes	120 shakes
-0.78449	0.10078	6.41314	-0.96411	0.0238
0.04946	0.01097	6.45163	0.26757	-5.58291
0.06229	-0.00186	0.0238	-3.77388	-0.00186
0.01097	2.24339	1.16567	0.13927	-5.57008
0.0238	0.0238	-0.04035	0.13927	0.01097
0.07512	0.10078	4.53996	-5.55725	0.7936
0.10078	-5.57008	-1.93919	-0.24563	-0.05318
0.03663	0.01097	-0.20714	0.83209	6.47729
6.57993	-0.00186	0.08795	1.46076	0.10078
0.10078	0.0238	-1.82372	-0.06601	-0.02752
-0.00186	0.06229	-0.2328	-2.77314	6.52861
-0.00186	-0.00186	0.22908	-2.22145	-5.54442
-0.00186	-0.00186	-1.65693	-1.40033	-0.00186
-0.00186	-0.00186	-1.42599	1.84566	-0.14299
-0.00186	-0.16865	1.84566	2.62829	-3.50445
0.10078	0.08795	-1.46448	-3.60709	0.03663
0.01097	0.0238	-1.37467	-0.55355	-0.07884
0.08795	-0.00186	0.01097	2.7181	3.84714
0.04946	-0.05318	3.85997	2.64112	0.04946
0.08795	1.28114	0.1521	-0.04035	-0.07884
0.11361	-0.00186	-2.01617	-0.96411	-0.18148
0.07512	-0.00186	-1.45165	1.74302	3.24413
0.08795	0.07512	-3.96633	3.8728	-1.96485
0.07512	0.0238	2.21773	-3.10672	0.22908
0.06229	0.07512	-2.029	-0.04035	0.08795
0.03663	-0.14299	-0.19431	0.11361	-0.00186
-0.01469	0.07512	1.85849	3.28262	-3.02974
0.07512	-0.00186	1.28114	-1.95202	1.78151
0.10078	0.08795	-1.41316	0.0238	-0.82298
44.02659	37.8107	177.1795	144.8581	232.7844

Our data and graph support Faraday’s Law. In general, our graph had a positive upwards trend, meaning an increase in speed of shaking increased the total voltage produced by the generator. However by the graph, our data taking was not entirely accurate. The main problem was trying to count the number of shakes accurately, especially as the speed of the shaking gets higher and higher. Trying to shake at a constant speed throughout the whole trial was also not entirely accurate either. Overall this experiment is very prone to operation error, but the overall trend of our conclusions is still true.

There are so many different types of energy, and one of the best is Nuclear Energy. The problem with Nuclear energy is that we still have more advances to make in the field, and not everyone is on board. But nuclear energy can be extremely effective, such as the fact that a fingertip of Uranium can output the same amount of energy as 5000 barrels of oil. So why are we still using other energy sources instead of nuclear energy?! Well the problem is that nuclear energy can be extremely difficult to harness, but we are getting there.

A group of environmental were extremely against Nuclear energy. They thought it was dangerous. For good reason as well, the history of nuclear energy has never been positive, with nuclear disasters and nuclear weapons. However through time they realized that much of data they used to base their beliefs were gathered through inadequate experiments, and overall there were too many misconceptions. Looking at the Chernobyl incident, even though many look at it as Nuclear energy being dangerous, it was the fault of the designers for the accident. Inadequate structure and design lead to the structure melting as the temperature rose.

The reason why a Nuclear Reactor is truly renewable is because you can use the waste from a Nuclear Reactor as an energy source for the Nuclear Reactor again. This is called a 4th generation reactor, even though it is still a work in progress, it is very possible.  Technically you would eventually run out, but a single reactor can run for a very long time, hundreds of years using this waste. It’s like using using a single orange to get several glasses of juice. Using the pulp and leftover residue, and squeezing more juice from it. It will be a revolutionary change. Then in addition to this nuclear reactors in general can last anywhere from 60 to 100 years, and this number will only rise as time goes on, and technology becomes even better.

 

Mars has always been a planet of much mystery, and from early on been the go-to-planet for alien movies and martians. There have been several missions to Mars, however not every single mission has touched down on the planet’s surface. It is much easier to send a satellite to Mars to orbit it and observe it and gather data. But, of the multiple attempts to touch down on Mars, seven of these expeditions have been successfully. Throw the past 50 years, many expeditions have been undergone, but the future holds even more possibilities.

Attempts at Mars Flybys began all the way back in the early 1960s with the Soviet Union. Several of the first spacecrafts failed to ever get close enough to Mars due to miscalculations, launch failures, signal loss, software malfunctions, and many more. The first successful flyby, Mariner 4, launched in 1964 and flew by Mars in 1965. This mission confirmed that Mars had a thin carbon dioxide atmosphere. The next several successful missions (with many more failed attempts in between) furthered our understanding of the Red Planet. We gathered: the dimensions of the planet, atmospheric compositions, topography, planet’s gravity, higher resolution images (by the 1990s) and many smaller details. This was within a span of 50 years and a lot was learned about the small planet. With all the newly gathered data, curiosity about the planet rose, and the search for potential habitability began.

There are currently 7 active missions on Mars, and to the people of our day and age, the most famous mission to Mars has been the Mars Curiosity Rover. The most interesting and most current thing regarding Curiosity is a photo that would be the first definite evidence regarding flowing water. We are unsure of what is actually depicted in the photo.

 

This photo and claim comes from a UFO hunter, who blogged that the dark streak is in fact evidence of flowing water on Mars, and claims that NASA is attempting to hide the fact that they found the water. In case you haven’t been aware of this, NASA did find evidence that could support the theory that Mars has water, but they never claimed they found FLOWING water on Mars. Whether or not this is actually flowing water or not on Mars, it is still super exciting to think about how close we are getting to making a potentially revolutionary discovery in our search for life outside Earth. In addition to Curiosity’s search for water and life on Mars, it has also been assessing the planets environment and conditions for possible hazardous radiation, mining into the ground and finding minerals that suggest that a lake was once present, and also taking thousands of pictures along the way which have helped keep the public informed on the progress of the mission.

Future missions for Mars are some of the most interesting possibilities ever. The last (and only) time humans have have stepped foot on another celestial body other than our own planet was in 1962. The famous moon landing quote spoken by Neil Armstrong “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”  resonates to even this day. Now 53 years later the possibility of sending human to Mars, a body much less suitable for humans than the moon, could become a reality. The goal of the mission would be to send the humans to the planet by 2030s. Currently there are many factors affecting the mission, one being of course budget. Sending humans to another planet (successfully) is not cheap. Especially being government funded, the government does not take it as a high priority. Once the budget and research is all completed, what would the mission consist of? There are different ideas such as sending people to mars, gathering data, exploring, then returning. But a much more intriguing possibility is the idea of a one way trip to Mars. Have you ever heard theories of whether or not humans could colonize Mars? Well sending a group of people to Mars and never returning would be like a precursor to this. Leaving someone on a planet could end in disaster, but it could also be the first step to one of the greatest adventures in the history of mankind.

“Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival.”
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson

http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/space-missions/missions-to-mars.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/

 

http://www.space.com/13558-historic-mars-missions.html

 

http://www.space.com/24268-manned-mars-mission-nasa-feasibility.html

 

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/98232/20151022/curiosity-rover-photo-shows-flowing-water-on-mars-claims-ufo-hunter.htm