Kyle Ramser and Gigi Vasquez
The Ball Car Model
If you are wondering why the name of our car is the ball here is why. We thought that with three wheels would be more stable than four so we were thinking of a simple way of making a new wheel. We were thinking and Kyle had this idea of putting a plastic whiffle ball as the front wheel. It worked as consistent as using a regular wheel and actually increased the friction.
Our goal was to develop an alternative energy vehicle that had to carry 100 pennies with a mass of 250 grams for a length of 5 meters. We were allowed to use any form of fuel. My group went through two different ideas. The first one being a simple box with two axles with with wheels attached. The fuel were going to use was a rubber band that was connected to a nail to use as a source of torque when the rubber band is rapped around. It was the same idea as a pull back car that I used to play with when I was a little kid. Unfortunately that idea didn't work out so we switched to plan b. This was a simple box car that would roll down a 2 meter wooden ramp. Then the simple box developed into a frame of a rectangular prism. We changed it into just a frame because it would reduce the mass, which reduces the amount of friction. We placed the vehicle .46m up on the ramp because that's where it would stop exactly at 5m. We wanted to make our vehicle as simple as possible becuase the more simple it is, the more consistent it is. Down below is a slideshow about our vehicle statistics.
Concepts
Spring Constant (k):how much resistance a spring gives when it's compressed-Force/distance (N/m)
Velocity (v): rate of covered distance in a direction-D/T (meters/second)
Acceleration (a): rate of change of velocity- V/T (meters/second squared)
Potential Energy of the Spring (PEspring): energy stored by expanding stretching or compressing an elastic object-1/2(spring constant)(distance spring is compressed)^2 (The unit is Jules)
Reflection
This project was pretty difficult. It was nice working with the people I was with, I feel that we worked very well together. We finished a lot of the things to do a little bit last minute so that wasn't very good. We needed to work on time management. Our presentation went really well and our calculations were very on point and accurate. I feel our design and fuel method could have been better. We worked very well as a group and got the job done in the end.