Passive Solar House
Evidence of Work/Content:
This project was interesting. My group and I built a house that could run using solar energy. We designed our house to contain solar tubes, skylights, light shelves, and windows. We had two skylights and one solar tube in the living room. Two windows and a skylight in the front bedroom. One window and a skylight in the back bedroom. Two windows, two skylights, and a light shelf in the master bedroom. A window and light shelf in the bathroom. A skylight and two windows in the kitchen and a skylight in the bathroom. This was our design.
This project was interesting. My group and I built a house that could run using solar energy. We designed our house to contain solar tubes, skylights, light shelves, and windows. We had two skylights and one solar tube in the living room. Two windows and a skylight in the front bedroom. One window and a skylight in the back bedroom. Two windows, two skylights, and a light shelf in the master bedroom. A window and light shelf in the bathroom. A skylight and two windows in the kitchen and a skylight in the bathroom. This was our design.
Cold Frame/Solar Reflector/Solar Tube
Evidence/Content: This project probably took us the longest. We were told to make designs for all of these things. After we made blueprints, the task of making the actual models was ahead of us. We soon had accomplished this and made presentations for our projects. Later we had a STEM presentation night where we presented each presentation in front of judges with the intent to make our model the chosen one.
https://prezi.com/15sjpq3imylk/copy-of-cold-frame/
https://prezi.com/tcxrxyxkameo/solar-reflecter/
http://prezi.com/fyzmc3uqxfop/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
https://prezi.com/tcxrxyxkameo/solar-reflecter/
http://prezi.com/fyzmc3uqxfop/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
Windmills
Evidence/Content: In this project we made both horizontal and vertical windmills. We had a little in class contest of who could produce the most energy off of their windmill. We found off one trial and error that we needed to angle our surface so that the wind has something to push instead of just a flat non-angled surface.
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Solar Water Heater
Evidence/Content: In this project we created a solar water heater made from cardboard, plastic, copper, tin foil, and a coke bottle. The idea was to set the heater outside in the sun on a fairly warm day and let it warm up. We would then fill up our bottle with water where we would take the temperature before hand. The room temperature water was 20 degrees Celsius. The water ran into the copper pipe and down into a cup where we would then take a new temperature. We repeated this cycle for about 30 minutes and found that we had raised our temperature by 6 degrees Celsius. The bad news was that we lost too much water. Overall this project was interesting.
Physic Concepts that could be useful:
- Conduction - transfer of heat through a material
- Convection - transfer of heat through a fluid
- Radiation - energy transmitted as rays, waves, or particles
- Heat - a form of energy
- Thermal Conductivity - the flow of heat from a warmer material to a colder material
- Fluids - a substance, liquid or gas, that changes its shape to fit whatever it is in
- Pressure - force per unit area,
- Archimedes' Principle - states that the upward buoyant force on a body in fluid, is equal to the weight of the fluid that the body displaces
- Buoyancy - the ability to float in a fluid
- Gases - form of matter, the molecules in gases are more widely spaced than those in liquids or solids
- Boyle's Law - at constant temperatur, the pressure times the volume of an enclosed gas is constant, if one increases, the other decreases
- Ideal Gas Law - Pressure x Volume = Number of Molecules x Constant x Temperature
- Bernoulli's Principle - "When the speed of a fluid increases, the pressure drops."
- Laws of Thermodynamics - There a several Laws of Thermodynamics. Here was the main four. The 0st law explains temperature, if two systems are in thermal equilibrium without a third system, then they are in equilibrium with each other. If A=B and A=C, then B=C. The 1st law is the Conservation of Energy. This law states that energy is neither created nor destroyed. Heat is a form of energy, The 2nd law states that disorder increases over time, everything becomes the same temperature. The 3rd law states that temperature can never get to absolute zero. Heat always exists.
- Specific Heat Capacity - constant for a substance that measures how slowly it heats up, how well it holds heat.
Material Testing:
For this project we tested all types of different materials to find the best insulators, conductors, and absorbers for a solar home. The materials tested varied from brick to spray foam. We tested the materials over a course of thirty minutes to receive accurate data. We would measure our data by taking the temperature of the tested material every five minutes. After our data was collected we gained our results. We found that fiberglass is the best insulator. Our data also led us to discover that dirt was the best conductor and copper was the best absorber. We also found that black paint was the best at holding onto heat.
Reflection for all of the projects
For our solar house, I feel that we did quite well. We had loads of light in the house, but our actual model was not astatically pleasing. We could have painted it instead of drawing on the cardboard. Our 3 items project was quite difficult. Although we did well on the all 3, cold frame, solar reflector, and solar tube. Our presentation were amazing, but on the night of the presentations we failed to answer many questions and I had some technical issues with my prezi. I feel like we could have been a little more prepared. The windmills was a disaster. At first our designs that we had were meant to be horizontal or vertical no switched around. Our original attempt at horizontal was a giant fail. It did not even move. Our next attempt did ok and produced .98 energy on high wind. Our vertical flew apart on the first try because it was too heavy. After taking bits and pieces off we could get about 2.5 energy on high wind. We could have angled our surfaces better. I personally did not like the solar water heater project. It was a hassle. The clay was not water tight and neither was hot glue. We were able to heat up our water by a lot, but we lost so much water that the water was barely heated from the beginning because of a leak between the bottle and heater. These projects were hard work and took a lot of effort.