On 2/10 in class we completed the week 4 Generator Experiment. For this experiment we were using Lego Mindstorm along with a hand generator and voltage probe.
This is what the set up was like:

And here is an actual picture of it:

We learned that inside of the generator was a magnet and coil mechanism that when shaken generated power. So, once we had everything set up and connected we were ready to begin running our 5 separate tests. For each test we had to start Labview for 30 seconds, shake the generator, and count the number of shakes. As I said, we did this 5 separate times. The first time we didn’t shake the generator at all and each time after that we increased the shaking speed. 

After all of our tests had been executed we were able to transfer this data into excel. For each test there were 30 seperate voltages recorded. For each of these we added them togather and squared them giving us one number to work with for each of the 5 test trials.

The data looked like this:

We also made a graph of this data:

 As you can see the faster we shook the hand held genrator the higher the voltage.

This lab was important because it teaches us that there are alternative ways to produce energy that are much more environmentally friendly. Maybe in the future we will all have hand held generators that we can power electornics like our cell phones and computers with!