Why did we Build Cars? |
Hyundai asked the freshman San Marin STEM class to create ideas for alternative energy cars to replace that of the electrically powered energy efficient cars. We were requested to create a short sales pitch for the cars that we make. The idea of efficiency for our cars is transferring stored energy into forward motion, or in other words transferring the most potential energy we can into kinetic energy.
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The Aquar
For this project, I worked with Michael, Jenna, and Beau. We produced an energy efficient hybrid car that can rely on either gravitational or elastic energy to move. The gravitational energy is in the form of a water tank and wheel and the elastic energy is in the form of two long rubber bands unwinding, turning the back axle. To see the Prezi that I made to aid our presentation click this text.
A video of my class racing the hybrid cars we built ourselves can be seen above. The Aquar is the largest one which got in second (hence why i was yelling "SECOND!!!"). The Aquar was named after its water wheel
Things to Know
What is it
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How it applies to Hybrid Car
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I feel very proud of my final product. I wouldn't say that we had many problems with time management. Our problem was the idea. Though creative and ambitious, the idea of a water wheel and tank is a flawed one. The huge water tank weighed down the entire car, making it hard to turn the wheels. The more water we had, the more power we needed to turn the back wheels meaning more water, making the car heavier in a vicious cycle. We spent too much time trying to fix the water wheel system, ending up not finishing the car by the specified date it was desired to finish it. That's basically the reason why we applied the rubber band system. It was honestly our last resort, trying to just get the car to move.
Creating the graphs, though last minute, was not hard. Using Google Drive was pretty simple and I'm glad that Mr. Williams went over it in class.