Month: April 2016

 According to the St. Louis Dispatch article, Auto Industry makes strides toward improving fuel economy, auto industries have been working on producing more “fuel-efficient models” With the concern of leaving less of a carbon footprint, car manufacturers have worked long and hard to alter their tactics while avoiding the whole idea that small-cars are the only option for an improved fuel economy.

“Under the new federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, the auto industry has agreed to produce fleets of vehicles that average 35.5 miles a gallon by 2016 and 54.5 miles a gallon by 2025” Considering the average is around 25 mpg, that’s pretty incredible to hear. And with Obama’s initiative to clean up this planet, his National Clean Car Program is believed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by quite a bit. This will lower the dependency on oil, which will then save us all the gas money we’re currently spending AND diminish the crazy demand for oil and all that comes with it.

According to The NY Times article, U.S. Sets Much Higher Fuel Efficiency Standards, “Americans would reduce their oil consumption by 12 billion barrels over the course of the program” That’s a whole lot of oil. Although this sounds fantastic, there is a concern (mostly expressed by Mitt Romney) that while saving money on gas, (keep in mind that the average fuel savings of one American would result in more than $8,000 by 2025) you wouldn’t be really saving much, considering the upfront cost (expensive). Ok Mitt, I see your point, for once.

But you have to remember that once oil prices had (dramatically) risen in the 80s-90s, this  “pushed many drivers to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles”. So either circumstance is not really going to save much money, except for the fact that we’d be saving the earth. Yeah, that might be the deciding factor for me.

During last classes brain storming, we didn’t have a main focus, so we all just kind of searched around online browsing different experiments to perform that would demonstrate comparable measured trials. I came across a few interesting ideas in my searches, a solar cooker, solar heater, and last but not least, homemade graphite lightbulb.

Here’s a screenshot of the Sci Guys video demonstrating the experiment (and not to mention the original video that grabbed each of our interest) 

After getting this idea approved, we scrambled to find out the materials necessary and how we would go about this performing this experiment. Since this is all powered on a line of batteries connected by electric tape, connecting the two end batteries to the graphite, we decided to perform three separate experiments, sort of. We decided to start out with 6 batteries, then move up to 8 (which is the required amount) and then add on till we have about 12 batteries  connected, hoping that we will successfully portray the different strength in the light that will happen when changing the amount of batteries used (messing with the source of power, essentially).

We’re excited to move forward with this experiment.

When I visited the Museum of Science, I took the time to explore what ever caught my eye, really. At this point, my group had not one clue what our experiment would entail, test, or demonstrate. That was our mission, to explore and find certain exhibits and try and brainstorm ideas from there. I took some photos of our trip:

Here’s a photo of Carter and Will trying to balance the center piece and finally getting it ( I think they’re getting it, who knows)

 

For whatever reason, the photos refuse to rotate to their proper view, but these offer a peak at the time we spent at MOS, discovering how things work. For example, seen above, Will messes with the ‘Turning Wind into Electricity’ and learns more about the process. Here’s a photo, seen below, of Will and our friend Carter trying to understand how they could possibly create balance using an odd number of weights. After finally giving up, a child about ten or so solved the riddle immediately. Showed us right up

Overall, the MOS was really interesting. There were a lot of cool exhibits and even a wildly colorful an electric show (pun intended) Shown below.