Wheels and Axles

Work continues on the electric vehicles and charging stations. New homework today: Read Wheels and Gears and do the quiz on My Big Campus for this reading. Due  Thursday, April 18.
Please sign and return the permission forms by Thursday, April 18th as well.

Documenting our EV work

We have two more weeks to finish our Electric Vehicles and Charging stations. It is important that we continue to document the work on our website EV2013. The website has lots of good information and links to useful websites on the Resources page. In particular you should look at the Sun Angle calculators to figure out the height of the sun at noon in Raleigh on April 27th. This will help with figuring out the optimal angle of the PV panel.

Simple Machines

We went over some basics about simple machines today. We defined Potential and Kinetic Energy, looked at Inclined Planes (Ramps) and an introduction to Levers. Here are the Notes and a short explanation of Ramps. Homework is to read about Levers by Thursday, April 11 and answer some questions on the My Big Campus site.

Gears

Today we reviewed gears and gear ratios. Here is a helpful website:http://www.dynamicscience.com.au/tester/solutions/hydraulicus/gears.htm
We will be moving on from our prototype cars and begin working on our final versions.

Drivetrain

We have been working on our cars and most of the teams have been able to make their cars run at least down the hallway. We are gathering data and deciding what works and what does not. Students are now documenting their work on the class website EV2013: https://sites.google.com/a/cfsnc.org/ev2013/ Each team has their own page. They are organized by class period.
Homework due on Thursday, March 28th. Read about Drivetrains. This is from the STEP curriculum and can be accessed through the STEP page or on the resources page of the EV2013 website.

Car Building - Round 1

We used cannibalized parts from last years cars and attempted to make some quick and dirty prototype cars to get a sense of how they work. We were a little short on time and materials, but most everyone came close to getting something that will run. We should have all of them moving by tomorrow.

Sustainable Transportation Education Project (STEP)

We are starting a new project that will carry us through the spring trimester. We will be participating in a program from NCSU called STEP (Sustainable Transportation Education Project). We will work in teams of 3-4 to design, build, and test 1/10 scale electric cars with rechargable batteries and Solar charging stations. We will compete with other middle schools from around the state on April 27th. Part of the project involves building and testing virtual cars and charging stations on the website: www.whiteboxlearning.com. Each team has a student id to enter the site and build their car. The site has really good resources for learning about the science behind the designs.
There is also curriculum available at the STEP website: http://step.gridc.net/. It can be found under Member Resources, PEV Design Rally Curriculum. The RV information is for the high school program that uses Radio Controlled Vehicles.