Hello blog readers,

Our latest scimatics project has been about capturing energy. We learned about fossil fuels and solar panels, but now we wanted to learn how to capture natural energy. Our driving question was “how can we capture renewable energy from nature?” For the project we had to build a generator that captures kinetic and/or potential energy from nature and transform it into electrical energy. Then make an advertisement video for the machine. We were suppplied with a few things like a hand crank generator and LEDs but we had to bring in our own materials.

We had one month to finish the project so my partner and I got straight to work. For this project my partner was Tamara. 

Tamara and I designed a wind turbine. We made it using a generator crank, popsicle sticks, bright pink paper, copper wiring, LED lights, and wind. The machine is supposed to work because the wind turns the turbines, which turns the generator crank. That generator will then conduct power through the wiring and into the LED lights. The lights were then supposed to turn on but we had some issues and the machine did not work due to lack of wind and positioning of the turbines. This generator was supposed to work because of kinetic energy more specifically mechanical power. Kinetic energy is the energy of an object that is posses due to motion. Our wind turbine would have worked if catch the wind.

Here is the video

Just because the machine didn’t work doesn’t mean I didn’t learn a lot. In fact, I do believe that it just helped me learn more because I had to see and understand where I went wrong. Most people would think of this as a failure but we didn’t give up we still worked hard and made a video for the machine in hopes of making another one that works but we didn’t have enough time. 

There were 4 curricular competencies that this project fits under and I learned a lot from.

The first curricular competency that we used was processing and analyzing data and information. We did a lot of mini lectures and a lot of research for our project which made me have to do a lot of processing and analyzing. 

The second curricular competency that we used was planning and conducting. For this project we could make any product that we wanted to capture the energy. We had to do a lot of planning and conducting to do that. Making different draft and rebuilding and reaping the final product involved a lot of planning. 

The third curricular competency that we used was evaluating. We had to check the rubric multiple time to make sure we were checking off everything that we needed. We had to make changes to be able to evaluate ourselves to the level we wanted to be. 

In the end, this project had it’s ups and downs and even though our final product doesn’t work, I learned a whole lot and you can see that in my mindmap.

Mindmaps

My mindmap at the beginning of the unit.

My mindmap after this project.