This past week in class we met with our final project groups and began to brainstorm for our final project.  During this meeting, we basically just began to think of some ideas that we could realistically create for the class and started to look on some websites for experiments.  The websites that the professor provided were helpful, and in addition to that, we googled some more to explore all of our options.

First, we had the idea to order a toy car that runs solely on water power.  However, we realized that that would be potentially problematic when it came time to recording data and how it all comes back to renewable energy.  Even though the car is a perfect example of renewable energy (it runs on water power), we would have a difficult time having the rest of the class collect data on it.

Finally, one of our group members found an experiment online that measures which container retains heat from coffee the longest.  We all decided that this was a great idea and we will be able to relate it back to renewable energy.  Basically the experiment calls for having three different types of cups (i.e. styrofoam, glass, or paper) and filling them with a hot substance and constantly measuring the temperature of the contents.  In the end, we want to see which container is best able to retain the heat of the fluid inside.

We realized that we will have to create a program through LabView in order for the temperature probes to receive constant data.  From there, though, we just have to complete the experiment and perform it in front of the class.