In our course, we gathered into small groups to build robotic cars out of legos and used Mindstorm system to figure out an understanding on how to measure distance and velocity. We were able to move the cars with the computer programs Labview and NXT. The goal was for the car to turn and set up a program, so only one of the wheels would move or we would have both wheels set to move but one wheel was set to accelerate at a lower speed. We set the program up the car, so it 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). Understanding the fundamentals of the car and measuring the diameters and circumferences of the wheels, we were able to messed around with more complicating programs. Was 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 experiment is useful for students that are studying energy and sustainability, because many individuals have been figuring out ways that we are able to drive cars in a matter that doesn’t take up so much energy. Using gases and others sources of energy clearly is impacting or atmosphere which contributes to global warming, if we don’t figure out a way to solve this problem our future generations might surfer from our problems. As time go by and science and innovation increases, i’m sure we’ll get to a point that we will be able to solve this problem.