Our assignment was to design a laboratory experiment for high school students. First, we seemed decided on doing an experiment called Race Day. This experiment was basically a way to explain physics, what is acceleration and a way to demonstrate it. However, after brainstorming for a while, we thought that the experiment Race Day wouldn’t attract the interest of the students that much and decided to search for another one.

After searching on Youtube and Google we found a pretty interesting and different one. One called NXT Machine Gun (not exactly an experiment). It is basically as the name says it, a machine gun. Our group found really cool that experiment and we had no doubt we wanted to do it. For a week we tried unsuccessfully to find the program that we would use for the machine gun until Eric (GREAT JOB) found it.

This Friday we tried to build the machine gun, thing I thought would be easier. After an hour an a half looking for parts and assembling them. We got this:

Unfortunately, didn’t have time to program it but I’m really looking forward to it. I think it I’ll an interesting and fun experiment for high school students.

Here’s a picture of the group doing their job :

 

Last week, we went on a trip to the M.I.T. nuclear reactor. It was an exciting trip for me because first, it was the first time I was going to M.I.T and second because it was a NUCLEAR REACTOR!!!

 

When we arrived there we were supposed to show an ID that showed we were 18. I completely forgot to bring mine. Without the ID the visit to the reactor was prohibited. I’m glad to say that after a few calls I got a picture of my passport. After I showed my ID I was given a device that would help us not to get a large amount of radiation.

 

Before going to the reactor we had an interesting presentation about it. The speaker gave us some facts. The reactor was constructed in 1958 and upgraded in 1975. It operates 24/7 at up to 6MW (which is very small) thermal power. It has two loop modern cooling system. Uses heave water D₂O for neutron reflection. Because the reactor is not big, there’s no melting down risk. It is a 1-½ feet diameter and is 2 feet tall. The reactor is very small but produces a lot of energy. It doesn’t produce greenhouse gases and uses Uranium 235 as fuel.

 

Here are some pictures of the reactor:

From outside:

From Inside:

 

 

Control Room:

 

After the talk, we went to the actual reactor. First, we went to a futuristic door system (which was very cool). Once inside, we could see where the patients were treated. The room where the reactor was was like I imagined, with a lot of machines and computers.  We were able to see the reactor from above. At the end of the tour we saw the computer room. It was very amazing, had a lot of different buttons and of course the controller.

 

After the tour, we had to go through two procedures to check we hadn’t a dangerous amount of radiation.

 

Although the tour was really interesting, it wasn’t what I expected. When I say this is not that I didn’t like the tour, is just that I expected a completely different thing. It was a great experience; I would never have imagined that I would ever see a nuclear reactor.

 

Below I’ll leave some links to the reactor page in case you want to know more about it.

 

http://web.mit.edu/nrl/www/

http://web.mit.edu/nrl/www/reactor/reactor.htm

http://web.mit.edu/nrl/www/tours.htm

 

A while ago, our group went on a trip to the library. We started our “tour” with the library lady showing us where all the printers were and how could we use them. After that we went to a computer’s room located on the second floor. Then the lady showed us where could we find sources for investigations in the library web site. There were a lot of sources in many topics such as science, health, sports.

Our homework was to find a topic and investigate it with one of those sources. I found an article about the life of Steve Jobs and how he changed the technologic world. Some of my classmates talked about the universe and Alzheimer.

Although I didn’t learn a lot of things on the tour it was interesting and a different way to learn about the library.

On today’s lab we worked again with the NXT robot. This time we used a flashlight that was connected directly to the robot. Inside of the flashlight there was a single battery. The whole idea of the experiment was to measure the voltage that it was created when we shook the flashlight. Demonstrating the Faraday’s law, which predicts how an electric circuit induces a magnetic field that can produce electromotive force.

 

Here’s a picture of the flashlight connected to the NXT.

We first shook it 130 times, after that we shook it 90, 60, and 40 times. We got the results and compared them in a chart.

 

Here’s the chart.

Although the lab was very short, it was fun, interesting and educative. It is always good to practice experiments like these and not only read the theory.

Last Friday we used again the NXT robots but with one different detail, solar panels. The experiment consisted in lighting the solar panel (which was connected to the NXT) from different distances. For lightning the robots we had flashlights. We were able to prove that the distance from the flashlight to the solar panel is inversely proportional to the voltage it produces, ergo, the closer the flashlight was to the panel the bigger the produced voltage was.

 

We tried with three different distances. 2 cm, 12 cm, 22 cm and 32 cm. Obtaining of course different results of voltage for each one. Here’s the graphic with the results.

 

After we tried all those distances, we added a new element to the solar panel, a color paper. Each of us grabbed three different color papers. Mines were orange, green and purple. Basically, the experiment consisted in putting the color paper in front of the solar panel and then lighting up with the flashlight. We tried all three papers from the same distance. We were trying to see if the voltage the NXT received would be different with the color papers, and if that was the case, we wanted to know if the color made any difference.

Here’s a graphic with the results.

As you can see, the paper does influence on the voltage. The color of the paper also influences on it depending on the light reflecting capacities of each color.

 

I think the solar panels topic is really interesting and necessary because as years will pass we’ll use this energy source due to all the advantages it has.

 

–       Free energy

–       Doesn’t emit greenhouse gases

–       It doesn’t destroy the ecosystem

 

On the other hand, it also has some disadvantages such as poor efficiency. It takes a lot solar energy to light up for example a house. However, this problem might be fixed in a close future, maybe increasing the efficiency of the panels with different materials and improving the way of saving the energy produced by the solar panels.