Energy Experiment

I like science…but I never knew how much fun I could have in a science class until this semester. I mean common, we get to play with robots in class! Last week we explored the use of energy. The technology behind this experiment was truly amazing, but also a bit confusing. Here is a picture of exactly what the computer/robot did to make this experiment possible:

By connecting the robots to our computers, we will able to study the amount of energy used with a pulley system. Weights were attached to the pulley, and we studied how much energy was needed to pull different weights. Our energy source was a fully charged battery. Of course, the more weight we attached, the more energy was needed to lift the pulley. We were able to adjust the power level and on this screen shot:

Our experiment was to play around with different weights, as well as different power levels. Lower weights and higher power levels made the pulley go faster, and vice versa. Once we tried different power levels and different masses, we set it up so that the data was immediately imputed into an excel format. Here is a picture of the excel format, notice that the first four have the same amount of weight and different power levels, and the last four have different weight and the same power level:

We then set up equations so that the computer calculated even more data:

I hope you all found this as fascinating as I did…I am excited to see what our next hand-on activity will be!