For this science project we had to figure out how we can capture and use renewable energy from nature.

Fist we learned about the different types of energy

Kinetic: the energy that it possesses due to the motion of an object
Potential: the energy possessed by an object because of its position relative to other objects, stresses within itself, its electric charge, or other factors
Thermal: the internal energy of a system
Chemical: Energy stored in the bonds of chemical compounds.
Solar: radiant light and heat from the Sun that is harnessed using a range of ever-evolving technologies
Electric: the energy newly derived from electric potential energy or kinetic
…And lots more

From this we figured out that we need to capture kinetic and potential energy then transfer it to electrical.

Next I created a list of questions I need to learn for this project

How do you capture kinetic energy?
What basic materials are needed?
What is the difference between kinetic energy and potential energy and how can we use both?
What are the project requirements?
Does the amount of energy produced matter?
What are the structure requirements?
If we need a expensive material do we get it?
How does energy transforms?
How do you measure energy?

To understand some of these questions we made diagrams.

This diagram represents the conversion of potential energy (Ep) to kinetic energy (Ek)

This diagram depicts heat energy comes from the sun being converted to multiple types of energy then being transferred from a water weel to our homes.

We also did multiple labs to understand this concept

The first lab we did inside was testing if we can use motors to power LED lights

Science experiment lab

Next we went outside and tested how much energy could be produced from two solar panels

solar panel power and energy production

In this Unit we went in a field trip to the powerhouse at Steve Falls Visitor Centre. Here we learned about water wheels, turbines, and how you can transfer energy to household items.

My group Sam, Robbie, Adam and I decided to create a Waterwheel for this project. We first wanted to use just a motor for our waterwheel because that way we would be only using the energy that was transferring through the stream but our idea didn’t work very well so we used a hand generator. Our only other materials for our product was chopsticks and spoons! We hot glued them to the hand generator so that they would catch the most water and voila the Spoonbine was created.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now now that we created the beautiful Spoonbine it’s time to test it out at a near by creak. We put our LED lights in parcelled so we could power multiple and still have them light up. We measured the Voltage and the Amps to get the Watts. Then we created an equation and graph.

Science waterwheel experiment

Finally we created a video.

Moving on from biology this term we learned all about chemistry.

We first refreshed on what we learned last year about the periodic table, properties of the chemical families, and figuring out the mass and atomic number.

Periodic table and chemical families

Protons and neutrons 

We also learned some new things in chemistry like the Lewis diargram and ionic bond, covalent bonds, balancing chemical equations and more

Lewis Diagrams quiz

Balancing chemical equations

We had two options on our project for this unit either to create a video on how do chemical reactants act like characters? Or an experiment with that demonstrates how can chemical reactions be used to identify the composition of an substance?

My partners Willa and Ruby decided to do an experiment.

Before jumping in to the experiment we learned how to successfully design and do the an experiment by doing multiple experiment in class.

Science experiment: total mass before and after reaction

Carbon dioxide experiment

something I learned about doing an experiment is that your prediction being right isn’t the point of the experiment. What makes a good experiment is if you can explain from previous knowledge or further research why the experiment did what you predicted or not.

Once we had a good idea about creating a successful experiment it was time to make our own. We decided to test multiple household items acidity.

Here is our  rough experiment design: 

You can read our more about our project and research here

We filmed our project in class and then later presented the video explaining the experiment. To make our video stronger we added music and text.

I have learned a lot about chemistry this unit. At the start of this unit we did a mind mad on what we know about chemistry. Now that we finnished this unit we created another one to compare.