An experiment conducted during class the other day included using the Mindstorm to control a motor attached to a cable that carried weights on the other side of a pulley system. The purpose of the lab was to utilize the tools given in order to see how different factors can affect the results of an experiment. It was a very clever way to learn multiple skills as the values that were recorded were later used to create graphs in Excel to visualize how the changes in values move along a slope. It helped build a better understanding on how to use Excel to get results for experiments and analyze data. Of the many factors which affected the values of the experiment included the power of the motor and the weight placed on the string. These variables were adjusted to get the multiple results which were recorded. From adjusting these values one was able to gain a better understanding of how they affected different aspects of the experiment such as the acceleration of the weights, the battery discharge caused by the pull, force needed for the run, and power used. The experiment was very easy to conduct as the program loaded on the Mindstorm recorded all the values for one but in the experiment between me and my partner, some of the values were invalid as we entered the wrong weight in the program. This messed up many of our values as the program would use the weight entered in order to calculate values such as acceleration. Even after discarding the invalid values, we still had just enough data to graph it and observe the patterns that the experiment followed as seen by the trend lines on the four graphs.
