Solar+project

__**Solar Project**__ __Gus Rowan, Aaron Powell__

__Journal #1__ The idea of a solar car continualy being powered by the suns rays is a good idea but has some flaws as well. If the weather outside is substandard for getting ample sunlight then the car will not be able to go anywhere and you will be stuck with no transportation. If you live in the mountains where we live there would be more problems with the idea in the winter months. One because there is more overcast sky's and less sunlight and two there is snow fall requiring more power to move around town. With these two problems, not getting ample sunlight, and needing more power the solar car could be not very usefull for several months out of the year.

__Journal #2__ The link to the article we found is http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/30/venturis-eclectic-solar-wind-powered-car/. The Article that we found is about a car that runs not only on solar power but also on wind power. Venturi's Eclectic solar car can hold 4 passengers, has 22 horsepower and can reach a top speed of 32 mph. When fully charged you can go for 31 miles with no sun or wind but can charge along the way. I think that this car sparked the question of storage of power on our solar car projects. Which is hard to overcome because both the battery and the capacitor only have one plug so the only way to change from solar power to stored power is by hand wich seems to be a design flaw.

__Journal #3__ Our understanding of motion and forces are important to this project because we will be able to do a lot of the work that needs to be done in class with math and science without actually going outside with our kits and testing things. We opened our kits and got the pieces into all the slots. We built the spinner in class and it worked well, we even charged up the batteries and ran the spinner off of those for a little while.

__Journal #4__ Theoretically we could determine a lot of things about our car's performance without leaving the room, by using our understanding about work and energy. We could use our understanding of work and energy to see the power, speed of our solar car.

__Journal #5__ We have not been able to tes the base model or our car yet, but on the next sunny class day we will because we had to build the base model again. Next class we will set up a small track on the hill outside and time the car running up hill. We will do the same for the base model and compare the two times.

__Journal #6__ My understanding about our solar cars is that the sun hits the solar panel it converts Photons to electrons. ­Photovoltaic (**PV**) cells are made of special materials called **semiconductors** such as silicon, which is currently the most commonly used. Also the solar panel is made out of siclicone which make the solar panel more durable. The solar cells make a current when positive and negative particles are separated from a bond and runfreely through the cell. We can gather the energy from the cell when the free flowing cells are looking for an outlet and we offer the outlet of current to go toward powering something. The problem with running the car on capacitors is that both the capacitors and the motors have only one plug so you can either run the motor with the pannel or with the capacitor. Something that would make the capacitors more usefull is if you could have them pluged to the motor and to the pannels so that they could be charging all the time and the motor could switch between pannel and capacitor energy if one was not recieving energy.

__Journal #7__ We have put our car into what we think is the final racing stage. I have seen other students put aluminum foil around the solar panels to help channel more rays into the pannel and get more power. This is using the idea of reflected energy because the foil is a very reflective medium which could create a lot more energy being absorbed by the pannel. We have not tested our car yet but when we do we eill test first without the foil and then with the foil to see if it makes a positive or negative effect on the cars performance. A mirror setup on the car would be another option to helf reflect more rays onto the cars solar pannels but the weight of the mirrors and the weight of what we would use to fasten the mirrors would probably add too much weight to be beneficial. A converging lense may be able to have a positive effect but as sam proved with too much heat in one spot these pannels can melt and become defective, mounting the lens also will add more weight and may not produce the power to exceed or even overcome that weight. We will explore these options more extensively the next time it is a sunny day and we can do some tests.
 * Add capacitors || We would add battery capacitors so that we could run our car without there being any sun. ||
 * Compact our car as much as possible || If we made our car as small as possible then it would be lighter, faster, and more of the power will go toward moving the car more efficiently ||

Mid-Term Grade: 86% Good job on the car itself, but you could use a little more elaboration on your journal repsonses rather than a one sentence blurb that doesn't tell me much. I am looking for how you are coupling your understanding of the class with this project.
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Brice