Energy EFFICIENT Project:
In this project, my group (Emmy Nam, Jessica Walters, and Nick Bergo) and I, also known as Team SOLution, had to find efficient ways to save energy for homes. Through out the project, we did many different tests like, for example, figuring out how Solar Water Heaters work. This project consists of many sub-projects, spending around a few months doing them, so it's a lot of information to cover. Below is everything we did, starting off with our first sub-project, the Solar Water Heater!
Solar Water Heater:
In this sub-project, we had to design and build a Solar Water Heater to show us how thermodynamics work. The water heater consisted of copper tubing, for heating the water, a plastic juice bottle inside a bag, for supplying the water, a cardboard box (top open to catch sun's light for heat) covered with tin foil, to hold the copper tubing so it can absorbing heat for heating up the water, and tissue paper that covers the juice bottle as insulation. The water would start from the bag and travel down the copper tubbing and through the box. The tubbing traveled through the box in a snake like shape so it can absorb as much of the sun's light as possible. The copper tubbing ends out of the box and into a cup. You then pore the cup back into the juice bottle, and the process starts over again. Although the design wasn't quite how we wanted it, the solar heater did work, however it gained little to no temperature over time; in a period of over 20 minutes, it only raise from 20 degrees C to 25 degrees C. One of the reasons it didn't go as plan is because our class ran-out of black paint, which we planned on spraying on our box so it can absorb more of the sun's light for more heat.
Day-Light experiment:
After testing with our Solar Water Heater, my group and I continued with created a daylight house design. The goal of this sub-project is to create a model house that can absorb a decent amount sun light, whether it's during the winter or summer, using a light bulb as the sun. The season effects the way the sun is positioned, like in the winter, for example, the earth's axis is tilts away from the sun, so the sun is lower in the sky. This means we need to have large windows facing the South, where the sun rises, to get as much sun light in the morning as possible for the cold winter. During the summer, however, the earth's axis will tilt closer to the sun, so the sun is higher in the sky. This means we don't need much sun light during the day so the house stays cool. In the end, our project did well during the winter, but the solar tubes (shown on the left) didn't work at receiving light.
< - - - -Top View of Model
< - - - -Side View of Model
Site Selection:
After we created our Day-Lighting Home, our next sub-project involved finding a site on our school campus for our future . The goal was not only to find a site on our campus, but to make sure it was a great place to place a future building. For example, this site must consist qualities of direct sunlight, easy accessibility, clear area, little noise, accessibility, visibility, etc. All the groups in our class walked around the campus and took pictures of what we thought consisted of these qualities. Our site we choose was b/w the football field and the basketball court. Although a many groups came up with clever locations, we all ended up using a location on Novato Blvd. (shown on the left) due to it's visibility and direct sun light.
Material Experiment:
In this sub-project, each group in our class, including my group and I, were given different tasks of answering,"What insulation are we going to use in our build?" The goal of this experiment is to find a material that is great at absorbing and reflecting heat and how long each material holds them and heats up. In order to find these results, we took a cup, filled it with water, heated it up at certain temperatures, and insulated the cup with different materials. We then timed each cup and measured it's temperature through out a 80 minute period. We tested with:
-Fiberglass Batting -Spray Foam -Styrofoam -Jeans -No Insulation
The most successful:
-Fiberglass Batting -Spray Foam
Shown in the graph above (I don't have yet sorry) is Fiberglass Batting and Spray Foam. It shows that over all, Spray Foam has the best insulation. Although Spray Foam is better than Fiberglass, however, it costs a lot more. So my group and I decided to go with Fiberglass Batting instead.
-Fiberglass Batting -Spray Foam -Styrofoam -Jeans -No Insulation
The most successful:
-Fiberglass Batting -Spray Foam
Shown in the graph above (I don't have yet sorry) is Fiberglass Batting and Spray Foam. It shows that over all, Spray Foam has the best insulation. Although Spray Foam is better than Fiberglass, however, it costs a lot more. So my group and I decided to go with Fiberglass Batting instead.
Wind Turbines:
In this sub-project, we had to create the most efficient turbine for a house. To do this, my group and I's task is to test the 2 different kinds of turbines; HAWT (Horizontal-Axis Wind Turbine) and VAWT (Vertical-Axis Wind Turbine). They both have many differences. For example, VAWTs are cheaper and can be put in smaller areas, where as HAWTs create more electricity. Our class was provided a station with stands that you would use to attach your wind turbine that measure it's speed when you turn on a fan. Our HAWT got a low speed of 1.56 and a medium speed of 1. 96. Although we were very successful with our HAWT, we didn't spend much time in making our VAWT and weren't able to fix it in time to record data.
Perpuse:
Justification:
Physics Concepts:
-Conduction: the transfer of heat by the actual movement of the warmed matter
-Convection: the transfer of energy through matter from particle to particle
-Radiation: electromagnetic waves that directly transport energy through space
-Heat: the form of energy that flows b/w to samples of matter due to there difference in temperature
-Temperature: the measurement of how fast particles in an object or area are moving
-Specific Heat Capacity: the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of an object or area
-First Law of Thermodynamics: energy can't be created nor destroyed
-Second Law of Thermodynamics: heat will not flow from one object to another object of higher temperature
-Third Law of Thermodynamics: there is no such thing as zero/no temperature; it's always constant
-Convection: the transfer of energy through matter from particle to particle
-Radiation: electromagnetic waves that directly transport energy through space
-Heat: the form of energy that flows b/w to samples of matter due to there difference in temperature
-Temperature: the measurement of how fast particles in an object or area are moving
-Specific Heat Capacity: the amount of heat needed to raise the temperature of an object or area
-First Law of Thermodynamics: energy can't be created nor destroyed
-Second Law of Thermodynamics: heat will not flow from one object to another object of higher temperature
-Third Law of Thermodynamics: there is no such thing as zero/no temperature; it's always constant
Reflection:
Out of this entire project, I learn A LOT of stuff. There was so much the go over through out the 2 months that I never done out of all my previous school years. Although it was a cool new way of doing projects and my group spending 2 months on this project, it was hard for me to get used to. I had a hard time focusing and remembering everything we covered that I kept forgetting the concepts and physics problems. I had to push myself to relearn it over and over and keep trying to understand it.
What I am mostly disappointed about though is the amount of work I did in these projects. I felt like I didn't do enough work that I could have done through out the 2 months out of my other group members. Many of my group members did a HUGE amount of the work and I would like to apologize for not pitching in more often. Even though this happened in the beginning, around the end I became more involved. Plus I had a very positive attitude though out the entire project, even if we screwed up on one of our calculations or graphs. Over all, I need to work on my participation more than I thought I needed to before, but I still supported my group members though out and I can't wait for my next project. Thanks for listening :)
What I am mostly disappointed about though is the amount of work I did in these projects. I felt like I didn't do enough work that I could have done through out the 2 months out of my other group members. Many of my group members did a HUGE amount of the work and I would like to apologize for not pitching in more often. Even though this happened in the beginning, around the end I became more involved. Plus I had a very positive attitude though out the entire project, even if we screwed up on one of our calculations or graphs. Over all, I need to work on my participation more than I thought I needed to before, but I still supported my group members though out and I can't wait for my next project. Thanks for listening :)