Lego Mindstorms | Experiment #3 – Energy

Last week, we continued our experiments using the Lego Mindstorms, only this time, we hooked it up to a flashlight to measure the energy generated with the magnets inside of it.

This particular flashlight had loose magnets inside that when you shook them, it would create the energy needed to keep them lit. Devices like this are becoming increasingly popular since it cuts down on needing batteries or other sources of electric power.

After hooking up the flashlight to the robot, we opened the .VI file that would measure and record the power we generated by shaking the flashlight. We had a few errors in the beginning, but were able to have three successful trials in which the data was used for our graph. For the three trials used, we shook the flashlight in a different rhythmic pattern (fast, slow, and staggered) to see if that would also make a difference in the generated energy, but I think that more than three trials will be needed in order to find conclusive results.

We took turns shaking the flashlight for 30 seconds, and since we had different rhythms each time, we had a different number of shakes. The program kept track of the energy in a spreadsheet in Excel, where we then used the SUMSQ function to make our calculations. In the first round, Jason counted 85 fashshakes which calculated to 153.4535 volts. My trial had a count of 32 slow shakes which was calculated to 53.09822 volts. Lastly, Rosemary’s trial had 29 staggered shakes (three shakes, then a moment of rest continued for 30 seconds) which calculated 36.59198 volts.

We then put this data into a graph and included a linear trendline. The more shakes, the more energy is produced, so it would make sense to shake the flashlight more if you wanted to keep it bright longer.