Yes, it is true, we are building solar cars in room B9 with the 6th grade GATE class.
This will be a week long Investigation into learning, building, and racing solar cars.
We started today with a mind map of how Solar Energy works. Once students completed their notes they read the following article:
http://www.need.org/needpdf/infobook_activities/SecInfo/SolarS.pdf
Finally students put it all together in an essay titled: Solar Energy.
Tomorrow the students will earn two solar panels based on the quality of their essay.
Thanks so much to Mr. Wulff for building this project for us and teaching it with us!
Picture of Mr. Wulff introducing the lesson
Students posted their work on Thinkquest. Below are a few examples of the students essays from today
Shiara C
Can you believe that simple sunlight can be converted to mechanical energy to, for example, power our cars? It is an unbelievable thought but it can be accomplished through a couple of steps. It all starts with the sun, like everything on this planet. As you know the sun is s a big ball of gases that is made of mostly hydrogen and helium but it takes four molecules of hydrogen to make one molecule of helium and the sun is made up of millions and millions of helium molecules. The way the hydrogen is transferred into helium is called nuclear fusion. Since the sun has an extremely high temperature and a lot of pressure it causes the hydrogen atoms to come apart and their nuclei to fuse. After it has fused it is now helium but not all of the matter is fused, some of it is lost and emitted into space as radiant energy.
It takes a little over eight minutes for the suns energy to travel 93 million miles to Earth. The suns energy is also known as photons, with photo meaning light. Only a small portion of the energy radiated from the sun reaches Earth, yet the amount that reaches Earth is enormous. Just imagine if all the energy radiated from the sun actually made it to Earth. How would it affect life on Earth? Would all that radiation just demolish Earth or just give us another power source to use? When these photons reach Earth we use Photovoltaic cells to convert the energy into electrons. We contain these Photovoltaic cells in, what we call solar panels. When these electrons start to move they create electricity or what we call mechanical energy. The mechanical energy cause’s the generator to move making it fulfill any option it is being used for. Then the generator cause’s the wheels to spin, therefore making your solar car move.
In conclusion, this is all called The Conservation Of Energy which in simpler terms means energy changing forms. To think this all happens in one tiny solar panel is unbelievable. Just think of all the possibilities that we can use this for. What if we extended solar energy so it can power much more? I mean we will always have the sun and as long as the sun is still shining we will thrive on planet Earth. If you were to look at it at a different angle the big picture is the sun is our best friend. Without it there would be no you or me, no wind currents, no ocean tides, and no temperature changes. All life on Earth would be diminished forever until the planet Earth yet waits for another sun and waits to start the process all over again with a whole new, fresh planet waiting to thrive on this planet.
Today
Day Two:
Fist a mind map...
Diagram and words to better understand the new concepts
Solar Circuits Activity
Lost your solar circuits activity? Forgot it in your desk at school? Not to worry, here's an electronic copy for you to download and complete. Only page one relates to your assignment.
File Type: XML Document: 195 K Writing Organizer
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| Use the organizer below to help target each component of the writing assigment. Describe what a series circuit is. Explain how it's wired. Do the same for parallel. Describe amps and volts. Provide colorful examples. Finally, relate it all to your solar car. How will you wire it? |
Optimal Wiring Configuration
Based on what you've observed in the simulation and in our experiments today in class, will you wire your solar car in series or in parallel? Will this result in greater voltage or amperage? What performance impact do you think this will have on your car?
Deciding on the solar car design and how, many panels, and what configuration would work best for the car design to win the "race".
Day 4
Students built their solar cars and took notes in their scientific journals. After students built their cars, they tested them. Fun work:)
The building manual was uploaded online for students to access
An example of one students excellent journal entry
Sarah Y
Zainab and I originally planned to build our car with a parallel circuit and 3:1 ratio, but right now it’s a work in progress. We’ve experimented with many different things. We tried a series circuit and it worked at first, but then the drive gear stopped turning. We also realized that our axle rod was really long, so it kept moving around. This made our car turn in different directions.
Now our finished car is very different than we had planned, but it’s great. It has a 5:1 ratio which will help it to move farther more quickly. A 3:1 ratio gear and 2:1 ratio gear are in between the axle rod and the wheel. This way the axle rod does not have as much space to move around, so the car will drive in a straight forward direction. The car is wired in a series circuit because it seems that our drive gear turns more easily that way. It took us lots of taking pieces off, putting them back on, and rearranging them to figure it all out, but now our car looks pretty good.
I hope our car races well, but I’m really not sure what’s going to happen. We never got a chance to test it out on the ground because class ended before we did. I hope the car has enough amperage to make it to the end of the track. Well, wish me luck!
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