Cotton-Top Tamarin? Or Doc from Back to The Future? You Decide.

Last week we went on a little trip to the Museum of Science.  Right from the get-go it was awesome, because my former roommate, Hannah was walking us over.  I hadn’t seen her in forever, so it was good to see her.  The whole time we walked there, she was raving about how awesome the Museum of Science is.  I guess that’s how must science majors feel, plus she works there.  I had never been there before, but she had mentioned that I should go there since we were roommates.  It was definitely an awesome experience and place, but I feel like I didn’t have enough time there.  I have class at 5:30, so I had to walk back over somewhat early to get there on time.

So even though I didn’t get to see everything there, it was still really enjoyable.  First we went to see the Catching the Wind exhibit.  It was all about windmills and wind energy, something that we had already learned about in class.  The exhibit showed how the turbines turn the wind into clean energy by both explaining it, and showing the Museum’s use of turbines to prove it.  There is a portion where you can see the live data from the mutliple turbines that the Museum had installed on its roof.  This was interesting becuase you get to see the different types of turbines as well as how well they work, too bad there was no wind that day to actually show something.  Another part of the exhibit allowed you to see where there are all types of clean energy in Massachusetts.  It’s interesting to find out if you have something like this without even knowing it; so we looked around to see if there were any in Juliana’s town.  Right next door was the Sunpower exhibit which showed the ways that solar power can be used to power electricity.  The portion I liked best was this little thing where it allowed you to move the solar cell and change the light, depending on what time of day it is.  This shows how the best way to get as much energy from the sun as we can is to have the cells be adjustable.

After seeing the energy exhibits, we moved on to some other ones like the Dinosaur, Colossal Fossil, Geckos, Investigate, Human Evolution, and the Monkeys.  All of the exhibits were really interesting, showing us the many different things that surround us on a daily basis that are apart of science.  The geckos were cool to look at and see how different all of them were.  Some evolved into looking like their surroundings, having their tails looks like leaves.  Others just looked bizarre, but either way they were awesome to see up close.  Seeing Cliff, the triceratops was most certainly a highlight of the day.  Cliff is one of the only fossils in the world that has 75% or more of it created from the same dinosaur, rather than multiple different ones.  By talking to one the of the workers we learned both this and that Cliff was baught by someone and donated/on loan to the museum so that we can all enjoy him.  My other favorite portion was the cotton-top tamarin monkeys.  These animals were just so fascinating to watch and learn about, and cute to boot.  There were 3 of them, a father, daughter, and son.  They had long tails, which you would think was meant for hanging from the trees, as we think all monkeys do apparently, but they don’t use the tails for that at all.  Apparently, at least in this certain monkey, it us used to for balance.They had this white hair at the top of their heads that remind me of Doc from Back To The Future, don’t you think?

Hand Crank Lab

Hand Crank Experiment

Group: Carol Petrosyan, Julianna Akt, Maggie Morris, Ashley Remaley, and Lilian Rogers

Equipment

• Lego Mindstorm Kit
• One NXT Energy Meter
• LEGO Education 9688 (B) Booklet

*NXT Energy Meter may need charging between uses.

Procedure

1) Take a LEGO kit and build the hand crank by following the instructions in LEGO Education 9688 (B) booklet.  Follow set of instructions 1B – Hand Generator.  Because we do not have the actual kits, it will be necessary to improvise, so follow the picture model in the powerpoint.

 

2) Make sure the LEGO reader is charged, which can be done through the computer and the Labview program provided. Once NXT Energy Meter is charged, make sure the screen is cleared by holding down the green button until there is a 0 Joules reading on the screen.

 

3) Allow for one reading with no movement as a base, which will be 0 Joules.

 

4) After the base reading, do four separate trials cranking slowly at first and increasing the speed each time. It is recommended that cranking is begun very slowly at first and slowly increased with each trial. The powerpoint shows the approximate speeds to follow to achieve maximum results, but are not definite.

 

5) As one student cranks they must count the number of cranks during the 30 second trial and record the number. Another student will read the Volts on the NXT Energy Meter display and will record an average number for each.  At the end of the 30 seconds, record the number in the display for Joules. Press and hold the green reset button between each trial.

 

6) After all four trials and the base reading, go into Excel and record the numbers into a table. Then graph the following information: The main graph is Number of Cranks Vs. Output of Energy (Joules), also construct Number of Cranks Vs. Volts. Although both of these show essentially the same thing, one determines the total output of energy created from the cranks while the other will help with your consistency.

*There should be a positive trend in the Cranks Vs. Output of Energy (Joules) if the experiment has been conducted successfully.

 

Main Goal: Create sustainable energy through a hand crank/generator.  This will be manually turned and thus will create energy without waste to be converted.  The second purpose is to see the difference in energy output through different speeds.