Category Archives: SF-197

Robotics Activity Blog

Robotics Activity Blog:
Summary:
For the past two weeks, we have been using a program called LabView on the computer. With this program, we are able to manually decide on how the Lego robot will move. We can program the robot to move in different powers, distances, and numbers of rotations.
Objective:
The objective of the lab this week was to compare the distance traveled using the LabView program and a ruler.
Measurements&Results:
Diameter of the wheel: 5.5cm or 0.055m
Circumference: 0.1728m
Power

(Port A&B)
Distance (m) Time Interval
(s)
Wheels turned
(#)
Wheels turned
(degrees)
Distance

[Manually]
(m)
Distance

[Program]
(m)
Percentage

Error
(%)
25 0.075 1 0.4436 159.696 0.075 0.07663 2.12
50 0.175 1 0.9814 353.329 0.175 0.17246 1.47
75 0.27 1 1.5537 559.332 0.28 0.26846 4.29
100 0.47 1 2.233.. 839.999.. 0.395 0.38509 2.57
Comment: From the experiment, I learned that the program is capable of measuring extremely accurate numbers. I was very impressed by this program and as a future reference, I would like to use this program again.
Questions & Answers:
1. The wheel rotation (in degree and in number of turns). How are the degree that the wheel rotated related to the number of turns of the wheel?
A: It is proportional. Every  1 rotation is 360 degrees.
2. The time it took for the wheels to turn (in seconds and milliseconds). How are seconds related to milliseconds?
A: In every 1 second, there are 1000 milliseconds.
3. The distance the car moved. How is the distance related to the numbers of turns?
A: From our previous calculations, the circumference is the distance that the car moved per rotation. Which is 0.1728m.
Pictures:
Experience: I really enjoyed doing this lab because it was fun as well as educational in how technologically advanced we are becoming with these programs.

Germany’s Green Energy Policy Blog:

.          “Going Green” has been the new
trend these days. Everywhere we look, we would see different advertisements
telling us to “recycle” or “stay green” to promote renewable energies as well
as to cut down on the amount of pollution.
.          Every year, when all of the
countries gather up at the Earth Summit, both developed and developing
countries come together to become more  eco-friendly and to be more conservative.
However, the only country that has been successful out of these countries is
Germany.  It may seem very odd for such a
powerful and economically well developed country to be extremely passionate
about being environmental but from my research, I found out that it was due to
multiples of past events that have occurred.
.         Germany became extremely
environmental when the nuclear power plant in Japan (Fukushima Daiichi) exploded
last year after the tsunami hit its coast line. Due to the leakage of nuclear
radiation and the extreme confliction over what they should do with the waste,
Germany became enormously traumatized over the fact that the same thing may
happen to their own country as well. As a result, the German officials voted to
stop using nuclear power plants and transition to renewable energies. As a way
to stop using nuclear power plants, they decided to replace nuclear power
plants with wind turbine. Each turbine is about 130 meters tall and has three
61.5 meter blades attached to them; according to their research, each
revolution produces about 5 megawatts of electric power. In addition, German
Environment Minister, Nobert Rottgen, stated that he wants to decommission all
of its nuclear power plants by 2022 and obtain at least 80 percent of its
energy from renewable sources by 2050.
.          Although all of this
information about how Germany is going to be a success country with only
renewable energy sounds amazing, there are some negative things about this
project. First of all, Germany started off great. They were building turbines,
but so far they have only placed three turbines when in 8 years, there should
be hundreds of them. Secondly. Germany lost their lead in the transition to
greener sources of energy because of backlash, and environmental changes. In
addition, many critics have stated that this will cause explosions in prices of
electricity, power shortage, or missed environmental targets due to climate
changes.

 

.        From my point of view, I think
its wonderful that such big and strong country in the EU system is trying to
show other smaller and weaker countries that renewable energy is wonderful, but
if they somehow fail to become eco-friendly, then there will be no use. So as a
hope, I really wish that Germany will succeed and show the entire world that anyone
can become eco-friendly if they work together.

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES:

http://reason.org/blog/show/germanys-green-subsidies-shutting-d

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/revolution-threatens-to-falter-is-germany-s-green-energy-plan-failing-a-790940.html

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/germanys-green-energy-gap