Lego Mindstorm is one the best things we did class so far. Lego Mindstorm is when we had to build a little car with Lego pieces and a NXT. The NXT is a small computer where you can program it tell the motors what to do and when to turn and stop. Assembling the car we had to use a Lego piece that’s where the Lego part in the name comes in. Building it was such a pain because we had to improvised since there were pieces missing. When you assemble you had to use Lego pieces to connect the motors to the NXT so the NXT can tell the motors when to go and stop. After we had assembled the car my partner Mohammed and I had to program the car to do a simple task such as goes in a circle with a radius of 10 inches.we did tat by connecting the car to the mac via USB and launching Lab View. Lab View is a program that can help us program the car. We could have programmed the car to do anything we wanted such as brake, only the left wheel turn, only the right wheel turns, Etc. After doing that we had to find out how many times that car moved to our calculations to what the computer said. After doing that we had to find the percent error and if we were under 10% percent then we would be all set.

The formula we used was
((|ruler reading-computer reading|)/(average of the two))*100= equals percent error

The first one we got was
((|1.26-.2751|)/(.2675))*100= 3.37
The percent error of that was 3.37%

The second one we got was
((|1.373-.377|)/(.375))*100= 1.066
The percent error was 1.066%

The third one we got was
((|.179-.16|)/(.1695))*100= 11.2
The percent error we got was 11.2% a little bit over

The last one we got was
((|.089-.073|)/(.081))*100= 19.75
The percent error on this one was 19.75% we were really over on this one.

In general this activity was really fun to do since it did include something interesting. The best thing we did would have to be building the NXT since that took the class quite a while to do. The calculations we had to do were somewhat right since two of ours were under 10% while the other two were not. If we did have more time with the program and the NXT we could of done so much more than what we had to. If had the chance to buy I would but the starter kit is too expensive for me. But I do want to buy it when I get the money to it would like a fun project to do when I want to see what it is capable of.
Resources
My notes and my memory

On June 2014 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a plan to cut carbon from the power plants across America. This was all under President Obama’s Climate action Plan or known as Clean Power Plan. The Clean Power Plan is said to maintain affordable, reliable energy while cutting pollution. The reason why all this is happening is because the average temperature has been rising since 1901. You may be wondering were Obama got this idea; he got the idea from George Bush. When he came into office in 2000 bush had tried to push this idea to the EPA but they did not go for it that much. When president Obama came into office in 2012 he wanted to continue this idea and he was determined to pass the bill. When president Obama wanted to make this bill happen he was ordered by the U.S Supreme Court to regulate the carbon pollution. What that means is that he has to control the output of carbon in the air. Even though this may be a good idea but the states that depend on coal won’t get a lower electricity bill but they will the same as us. Even though this may help the average temperature the carbon can still affect Children, the elderly and the poor. The new plan will cut about 30 percent of the carbon in the air. It is predicted that by 2030 the health benefits will be worth about 55 billion. With this plan each and every state has to submit their own plan on how they will comply with this issue by June 2016. The EPA has designed four approaches the states can take but the way they do it will be up to them. The best thing about all of this is the plan will not hurt the economy what so ever. This may be true or false but we will have to wait to find out. The cons of this plan are this will hurt the national GDP and employment. This won’t clean up much of the carbon it is projected to clean up only 1.8 percent. The whole cost of this plan is huge and the electricity will rise $289 billion. Some pros of this plan is that in 2012 extreme weather cost tax payer $100 billion in cleanup costs and they will decrease if the plan is effective. This will even make a new generation of clean up jobs which will help the unemployment rate.  This plan seems to be a good idea but it will have its draw backs as it goes on in the future.

Resources

http://www2.epa.gov/carbon-pollution-standards/clean-power-plan-proposed-rule

http://grist.org/climate-energy/the-nine-things-you-need-to-know-about-obamas-new-climate-rules/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-pope/five-things-to-remember-a_b_5631967.html

With gas prices on the rise today the average consumer has to save on the budget as much as they can. Even the automobile industry is trying to help as much as they can. Now that the Obama administration has stepped in they have to help the consumer more than ever with a deadline of 2025 to raise their average fuel economy. But that is still eleven years away and no one wants to wait that long. For the impatient person car manufactures are doing something to help right now.

Back in 2011 President Obama announced that an agreement with thirteen major automakers increase the fuel economy to 54.5 miles per gallon. The automakers involved in that agreement were Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Toyota and more. With the agreement the automakers must have reached 54.5 mpg by the model year 2025. But the automakers are improving a little bit at a time with each new model year.

Current CAFE and Future CAFE

The Hybrid car, Yes I said the word hybrid even though they might not be the most appealing *cough* Toyota Prius *cough* they are the cars that get the most vehicle and they are on a rise since 2005 and with the Prius being number 1 in sales. But what is a hybrid you ask. A hybrid car when two energy sources are running the car. Today it would gasoline and electricity. With the average mileage of a hybrid sedan is around thirty miles a gallon combined of both city and highway which is quite impressive since non hybrids only get around twenty miles a gallon combined.

Now if you still don’t want to spend money on gasoline but still want a car check out any pure electric car. The electric car just works likes a regular car but instead of a gas tank they have a battery pack which in most cars is in the back of the car. The great side of electric cars is they can go around 80 miles a charge. When it comes to charging it may take about 72 hours to go from empty to full in the case of Tesla model S and that’s just from a regular household plug. The down side of electric cars is that they need to be charged by a regular household plug or a special charging station that can be found in most major cities or you can have one installed in your house.

What car manufactures could do right now is have auto stop and start already equipped in all there new models. Auto stop and start is a feature that was just in hybrids but is now moving to regular cars. But what is auto start and stop is when you’re at a standstill in your car the engine will turn off and when you accelerate the engine will start back up. This would save you some fuel economy but not much. Every little bit does help.

Cost of driving a Electric Car

In conclusion the auto industry is doing a lot to improve the mileage of their cars. They could do better if they have auto start and stop already installed in all their cars but that is an add-on in most of their cars. With the help of President Obama the automakers are getting to the 54.5 mpg standard.

Work Cited

Csere, Csaba. “How Automakers Will Meet 2016 CAFE Standards – Feature.” Car and Driver. N.p., May 2010. Web. 18 Sept. 2014. http://www.caranddriver.com/features/how-automakers-will-meet-2016-cafe-standards “

Herrera, Tilde. “How Automakers Can Meet the New 54.5 MPG Standards.” GreenBiz.com. N.p., 01 Aug. 2011. Web. 18 Sept. 2014 http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2011/08/01/how-automakers-can-meet-new-545-mpg-standards”

Berman, Brad. “Cars.” Detailed List of Electric and Plug-in Hybrids. N.p., 16 July 2014. Web. 18 Sept. 2014. ” http://www.plugincars.com/electric-cars”

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