In this project we will be designing tiny houses that use a little electricity as possible. Instead, we will be harnessing the power of the sun. However, we can't just use solar panels. We have to research where to put windows, what materials let in heat and which keep it out, how to heat water, and then design a tiny house.
What is a tiny house: A house that is less than 400 square feet and is either on a foundation or a trailer.
After the day lighting experiment, we looked into the heat capacities of different materials. Each group chose a few materials to test. They were placed under a heat lamp for 10 minutes. The temperature of the material was recorded every two minutes with a laser thermometer. Then the heat lamp was turned off for ten minutes and the temperature was recorded every two minutes. After, we imputed our data into a graph to analyze the trends. My analysis is below.
After running many experiments it was finally time to start designing our house. Below are the early concept sketches my group made of the house.
Below is the information we used for our final presentation. There are pictures of our 3D model, a cost breakdown, our Google Slides, and the presentation script.
Below is our official blueprints.
Below is our slide show. Underneath that, is the script we used as a base for our presentation.
After we were almost done with our tiny house, we did the experiment. We had to build a wind turbine to test ways to gather energy for our tiny house. Of course, you will need lights after the sun goes down. We had many material to make wind turbine blades from. We put the blades on sticks and put the sticks on a center piece that could attach to a post that measured the amount of electricity produced when a fan was put in front of the turbine. We tested our many blade designs in front of three wind speeds. We could also not use the sticks or the center and create a completely different design. Often the designs that did not use the sticks or center were the most successful. Then after finding our favorite design, we had to choose a variable and test it. From our test, we had to make a claim about the best wind turbine. Below you can see my groups blade design. We tested if changing the shape of the blades to try and reduce drag would make a difference. We found blade design 2 to be most effective.
The four main concepts we have learned about for this project are Radiation, Conduction, Convection, and Insulation
HEAT: A form of energy. Energy due to kinetic vibration of molecules. Cold, is the lack of heat.
Radiation: Heat in the form of waves/rays
Conduction: Heat that travels through a solid material
Convection: Heat that travels through a liquid or gas
Insulation: Something that does not transfer heat well
Specific Heat Capacity: The amount of heat a material can absorb.
For example: Water has a heat capacity of 1 J/g degrees c. Cast Iron has a heat capacity of .46 J/g degrees c.
Reflection: This was a long project compared to the ones we have done previously. There for we had more of the normal team work drama. Yet, I was mostly satisfied with this group. I felt that disagreements were solved and appropriate compromises made. I did feel that, because of the length of the project, my team was more unfocused. I don not fault this entirely to my teammates but to the length of the project. It is difficult to maintain a steady work ethic through many weeks. Since my group was often ahead of schedule, there were some days were we had nothing to do. I wish we had found something to occupy ourselves instead of messing around. I still have to continue working on my cooperation skills. Like always, I found myself still doing more work then some of my teammates at given times. This is because I have a hard time trusting others to do work correctly. I need to continue working on equally dividing the work among my teammates. However, despite all of this. I feel my team put together a project we can be proud of. We were done ahead of time, presented well, and produce a good product.