A full semester of science has concluded. Our last assignment tasked us with performing an experiment that our peers created. My team joined forces with Rebecca Bernardo’s team; we gave them our lab handout (available here) and our constructed wind turbine and I sent Rebecca and most of her team off with Ashley to perform our experiment.
This left Phil in charge of showing us the ropes of Rebecca’s team’s experiment. It was created in order to test how different capacitors store solar energy from a flashlight. He showed us how to work the circuit board and told us about the different capacitors. The Labview program that we would be using had already been set up by Professor Shatz (thank you for that!). We performed 6 trials (2 for each of the 3 capacitors) and recorded our data. Our findings concluded that the highest capacity capacitor was most efficient in storing energy from solar power.
Rebecca’s team’s lab sheet included questions about which form of renewable/green energy (solar or wind) was more efficient. After studying wind energy for the past couple weeks I have to vouch for wind, simply because the amount of power that can be generated is much higher than solar.
Working with my group on another group’s project was a collaborative and simple experience. Ashley helped Rebecca’s team by showing them how the turbine worked and guiding them along in their testing. Overall everything went smoothly, and we bid farewell to Sci-184 on a good note.