Evidence
For our Power Novato Project, our objective was to design a power grid that can power the entire city of Novato or our school, San Marin. We chose to power Novato by using half of the existing power source in Novato and power the rest of Novato by building various wind turbines, solar panels, hydrogen fuel cells, and gas turbines. For our Robot Art Show, we learned about programming an Arduino Board with existing program and with our information, we created our own program. We decided to program a Piezo Buzzer to play the Tetris Theme with our Arduino Board.
Content
For our Power Novato Project, we started by learning about wind turbine design. We experimented with small wind turbines by changing the different angles of the blades and measuring the amount of electricity it produced in different strengths of wind. This would help us if we wanted to include wind turbines in our power grid. We next learned about electrical fields and static electricity by playing around with a few electricity simulations and did a static electricity lab with tape. After this, we learned how a magnetic field can lead to an electrical current by doing a lab where we created a small electromagnet with a 9V battery, some wires, and a nail. For that lab, we tested the strength of the electromagnet by the amount of paperclips it could pick up. We also dissected a motor to learn more about how a magnetic field can be applied in electronics. This helped us learn how electricity works for our power grid. We later went on a field trip to a farm that runs on their own power grid. There, we learned about different power sources and how they can be setup and build to have no single point of failure. This gave us an example that we could model our grid after. After learning all this, we finally designed our electricity grid. We did a lot of research on how much electricity Novato uses, what different power sources we need, how the electricity would be stored, how electricity would get from place to place, and also the overall cost of the materials and other ongoing costs. The document above shows our research in detail.
For our Robot Art show project, we started by learning about the basics of circuits such as voltage, current, and resistance. We also learned about different types of circuits by running a simulation on these circuits and measuring their different voltages and currents. This helped us learn how circuits are made and how each connection is important for a circuit. After doing this, we did some work on breadboards including the blinky light experiment where we setup a breadboard to make an LED light blink. This helped us with getting familiar with what we would be working with. After this, we did various Arduino programs where we learned different commands and different circuits. This helped us learn about the necessary codes and hardware to make our Robot Art Show. After learning all the necessary codes, we went ahead and programmed our own program. For our program, we programmed a Piezo Buzzer to play the Tetris theme. We started by setting up the board and telling the board where the input would connect. Next, we had to tell the board the different notes, beats, and set the tempo. In order to do this, we had to define each note by their individual frequency. We lastly had to tell the program to repeat the song and our song was complete. The video above shows the final product.
For our Robot Art show project, we started by learning about the basics of circuits such as voltage, current, and resistance. We also learned about different types of circuits by running a simulation on these circuits and measuring their different voltages and currents. This helped us learn how circuits are made and how each connection is important for a circuit. After doing this, we did some work on breadboards including the blinky light experiment where we setup a breadboard to make an LED light blink. This helped us with getting familiar with what we would be working with. After this, we did various Arduino programs where we learned different commands and different circuits. This helped us learn about the necessary codes and hardware to make our Robot Art Show. After learning all the necessary codes, we went ahead and programmed our own program. For our program, we programmed a Piezo Buzzer to play the Tetris theme. We started by setting up the board and telling the board where the input would connect. Next, we had to tell the board the different notes, beats, and set the tempo. In order to do this, we had to define each note by their individual frequency. We lastly had to tell the program to repeat the song and our song was complete. The video above shows the final product.
Reflection
For these two projects, I learned a lot of new things that can be applied when I work in the future. Some things that I think went well was our chemistry. I think we worked well together covering our weaknesses and strengthened our strong points and the final product was ideal. If I can continue having good chemistry with my teammates, projects will go a lot smoother and become much more fun. Another thing that went well was the overall positive working environment when I worked with these people. I thought that their attitudes were overall positive, we had had a lot of fun, and we picked each other up when one person was down. When all teammates are getting along with each other, teamwork can become stronger and we can become closer friends. Although we worked fairly well together, we did have our low points as a team. One thing that we could've worked on is distractions. We did get distracted from time to time which could've ruined the quality of our work and could've gotten more done. If we can work consistently without much distractions, our work output could've been a lot better. Another thing that we struggled with was our emotions. We dealt with frustration and anger throughout the project as expected from a difficult task. It is when our anger got in the way of our work is when it got ugly. We were very frustrated with the blinky light experiment that it held us behind a few days which we could've used to take more notes on the code or add an additional component to our Robot Art Show. Next time, we should work on keeping each other in check emotionally, that way, we can work without stressing ourselves out. This project was very fun and I learned a lot by working with this group and hope it only gets better in the future.