Peter Pan V The amazing hybrid car
The Need and peramiters-
The beginning of this project started with our need from Hyundai to build a car that doesn't run off of Gasoline. The car would also have to go a distance of 5 meters. We had to try to get as exactly close to 5 meters as possible. A rule for us was that we weren't allowed alter to ground in any way.
oUR bUILDING pROCESS
The process for my group and I began when we first got our materials which was wood, scooter wheels and skateboard wheels. With these we attached two scooter wheels on the back and skateboard wheels on the front of a flat piece of wood. For the source of power, we used a spring with a string on one end that was tied to the outside of the wheels. Once we finally set up the first time it completely spun out. the back wheel went so fast, it didn't have any grip on the floor. We tried to solve this problem by trying to give the wheels more traction, and extending the frame another foot, but nothing worked.
Griffin in our group had a good idea of making a very small wind powered car. The back wheel was set up similar to a windmill. He built all of the parts and did eventually set it up, the only problem was that we didn't that could work to supply the wind needed for the car. After spending a descent amount of time searching for a solution to power the car, we gave up on the idea.
Our third and final car, we decided on nearly a foot long frame with strong supports and a similar set up for the wheels as our first car. We used scooter wheels in the back of the car and skateboard wheels in the front. Near the front there was a wood support to hold the spring. again string was tied to the spring. The difference between our two cars is that this most recent one had much more mechanical advantage in the scooter wheels. We wrapped the string around the axle, compared to around the circumference of the wheel. With only putting the string around the axle it didn't let the wheel spin out. We still had to put more weight to increase the pressure on back wheel. When we tested this car for the first time, it went very close to 5 meters. After multiple more tests we finally found the perfect tension on the spring to make it go five meters.
Griffin in our group had a good idea of making a very small wind powered car. The back wheel was set up similar to a windmill. He built all of the parts and did eventually set it up, the only problem was that we didn't that could work to supply the wind needed for the car. After spending a descent amount of time searching for a solution to power the car, we gave up on the idea.
Our third and final car, we decided on nearly a foot long frame with strong supports and a similar set up for the wheels as our first car. We used scooter wheels in the back of the car and skateboard wheels in the front. Near the front there was a wood support to hold the spring. again string was tied to the spring. The difference between our two cars is that this most recent one had much more mechanical advantage in the scooter wheels. We wrapped the string around the axle, compared to around the circumference of the wheel. With only putting the string around the axle it didn't let the wheel spin out. We still had to put more weight to increase the pressure on back wheel. When we tested this car for the first time, it went very close to 5 meters. After multiple more tests we finally found the perfect tension on the spring to make it go five meters.
Reflection
I learned a few things that I didn't know before this project. Two things that I learned is that to get the most mechanical advantage and not have the wheel spin out, the force has to be applied to the axle and I also learned that I have to be very careful with large drill bits in a power tool. During this project two things that i think that we could have done better was think out our plans more before building it and then finding out that it doesn't work, and the other thing we could have done better was all of working more on one design or idea.
the Story Behind The name
During our long classes of building our cars, Joe would sometimes sing. He is a great singer and the next Justin Timberlake. One song that he would sing often was "Forever Young". So at the end of our project we named the car after Peter Pan because he is forever young. The fifth stood technically for our this car being fifth attempt.