The Mystery Machine!!!
Summary
For this project my group, which consisted of; Me, Emilie Claire, and Tim Madison. We were tasked to build a self propelled vehicle that could travel five meters and stop itself at the same distance. This vehicle also had to carry a total of one hundred. Our group brainstormed longer than most, until we decided to use an electric motor. We "salvaged an electric motor from a "Lego Mindstorms Kit" from 2010. This allowed us to program our car to travel exactly five meters at top speed and stop at the mark without problems.
The Graph
This is my group's velocity over time graph, which shows the changes in speed of our car throughout the run. Ordinarily our graph would have increased, then decreased at an average rate throughout the run. The anomalies in our graph were caused by loss of kinetic energy through thermal energy which is cause by friction. The excess amounts of thermal energy in our car are cause by the axles rubbing against the wood blocks used to hold the axles in place, and any other friction inside the motor itself.
Our distance over time graph ran just as we predicted. We timed the car, marking laps at each meter and found that the car accelerated and kept a steady speed throughout the run. Going approximately 2.7 meters per second, the car reached the five meter mark at 19.48 seconds.
Conclusion
I feel that, over all, we did well on this project. Some aspects of the car (I'm sure my partners share my thoughts) were a little lacking. Mainly the speed and noise issues. Our car was, though very effective, extremely slow and noisy. Only one other car shared the same issues and that was powered by a motor made by Lego as well. My group did do well on communications and cooperation. We were very compatible and were able to complete the project in a timely and orderly fashion.