In our Contemporary Science & Innovation course, we were put into small groups to build a robot car out of Legos and used the Mindstorm System in order to be able to figure out and have a better understanding on how to measure distance and velocity.  We were able to move the cars with the computer programs Labview and NXT after  we put a battery in them. When we wanted the car to turn, we would set the program up so only one of the cars wheels would move or we would have both wheels set to move but one wheel was set to accelerate at a lower speed. At one point, we set the program up so the car would make a perfect circle by only covering a space of 12 inches (we used a ruler to make sure it went exactly 1 foot).

After we were able to understand the fundamentals of the car and measuring the diameters and circumferences of the wheels, we were able to toy around with more complicating programs. We were able to program how long and far we wanted the car to move and when we wanted it to stop. We plugged the car into the computer and used the VI program to measure the circumference of the wheel and the degrees in which the wheels rotated. In order to determine the wheel diameter, we had to measure the diameter (which was 6 cm.) and multiply it by pie. We calculated the percentage error at low, average and high speeds. When we set Powers 1 & 2 to 50, we distance the car moved was 12 centimeters, the number of times the wheel turned was 0.79722 centimeters, and the velocity was 0.1435 centimeters. We were able to determine the number of wheel turns by dividing the number of rotations (which was 287) by 360. In addition to that, we measured the % error by adding the distance the car moved (.12 centimeters) to the velocity (.14 centimeters) and then divided the results (.26) by 2 which give us an estimated calculation of a 13% error. Also, we were able to calculate the velocity by multiplying the number of wheel turns by the circumference.

This lab is useful for students studying energy and sustainability because currently many scientists have been trying to find a way for us to be able to drive cars in a way that doesn’t use up so much energy. This has been very crucial to figure out because of how severe our natural disasters have been, especially since the last decade. By using these chemicals, gases, etc. we are clearly not helping prevent them from lingering in the atmosphere which contributes to global warming being such a harsh issue today.