Do it Better
DescriptionFor this project, we had to take one of the projects we had done throughout the year and do it better. My group chose the solar water heater, which was part of the outdoor classroom project. We had two weeks to complete this project. We did a series of experiments to determine the best design for our heater. We settled on a metal pan covered on black sheeting, with 1000 mL of water in it. There were copper tubes in the water to attract heat, saran wrap covering the top, and a large reflector at a 72.5 degree angle to the ground. To add creativity, we decided to try making tea with the water (kind of like accelerated sun tea)
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ContentThe only calculation we did was to find the angle of the reflector to the ground. For more detailed information, see our slideshow below. This was very important to our project because the reflector was our most powerful way of getting heat into the water, and the wrong angle would have made the sunlight reflect to the wrong place.
This project also used sun angles, states of matter, and the four laws of thermodynamics. For more information on these, click the button to go to the outdoor classroom page. |
ReflectionThis project had many more good elements than bad ones. My group worked very well together, and we divided up the responsibilities very well. Usually, there would be three of us working on the experiments while the other two worked on the presentation. When there was only one thing to do, all five of us contributed equally to that one thing. Another thing that went well was our project itself. It worked amazingly well, gaining almost 80,000 joules of heat. Also, I think I worked better with my team in this project than in any of the others. Even the bad elements of this project had good aspects. We had limited time to conduct experiments because of the time limits, but this helped us focus more and learn how do do things quicker. We also didn't have time to practice our presentation in the right order, but it still went smoothly. Overall, this was one of my favorite projects, and it was a great way to end the year.
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