My team consisted of Sofia, Alexis, and Kara. After working in a previous experiment on the usage of solar panels to power NXTs, we knew that we wanted to do something related to solar energy and its relationship to sustainability. First we thought of using the NXT solar panels, but decided not to use them because they were a bit complicated and we did not want to meddle with Labview too much as we wanted the majority of the experiment to be spent doing the project rather than recording information, inputting it into excel, and creating graphs. Though they are useful tools, we wanted to simplify our process and procedure as much as possible. After googling science projects related to solar energy, we found one project that stuck out to us. It involved placing different colored cups filled with liquid under the sun, measuring the temperature of the liquid in each cup over time, and comparing the differences. It seemed to be an interesting project and gathering the tools needed to perform it would be simple.
We then strategized what our plan of action and divided up the tasks amongst ourselves to make the process of designing and running our experiment as easy as possible. It was great that the whole team contributed ideas and provided their honest opinions about the direction they’d like the project to take. Without honest input, contribution and thoughtfulness, the experiment would be much more complicated and time-consuming to run. We are hoping that the experiment will increase understanding of sustainability as something as simple as color can have a great impact on the amount of energy that is absorbed.