After understanding and implementing the theory behind the solar-powered vehicle. I began to make the circuit. I grabbed a LED light, dipping its longer leg to hole g10 and the shorter strip to g9. The LED light acts as a resistor, which prevents the charge from the battery to surpass the maximum voltage that the solar panel could charge, and avoiding the solar panel from being crushed. Then, I found a battery pack that could charge the circuit, but could only work with 2 batteries. I place the red wire of the battery pack to hole f10, and the black wire to g12, to make the battery provide sufficient charge when necessary. After finishing up the battery part, which is the first part of the 1st half of the overall circuit. I placed the wire connecting the negative charge of the solar panel to i12, and I placed the wire connecting to the positive charge of the solar panel to h9 so the charge would not go back to the solar panel, and not break it. Also, I added a switch on this wire because then I could decide on when I would like to charge my circuit if running out of battery. After that, I have fully completed the solar panel part of the circuit. Moving to the motor part, I stretched a wire from hole j12 and attached the other side of it to one side of the electric motor, then stretched another set of wires from the hole j11, connecting it to the other side of the motor, adding a switch in between the wires. Thus, I could decide on when to turn on or turn off the motor.

Here’s a picture of my circuit

Initial structure

At first, I made my car structure according to my plan, which is a 4-wheeled car that applies the term front-wheel drive, in which the car relies on the motor that carries the axis of the front wheels to rotate with 2 gears attaching into each other, known as the term gear drive. Above the axis, it is a huge rectangular 15*10 cardboard. To make the axis stable, I wrapped a tunnel structure with soft cardboard. Everything sounded plausible, and the motor plus the circuit was running well. However, some obstacles occurred during the experimental process. For example, the motor rotated extremely fast in the air, but the car walked at a slow rate on the ground, and sometimes might even halt its motion. Thus, I tried to add 4 fixed bearings (2 bearings for each axis) to make the wheel rotate freely because I thought that the problem was caused by not having adequate space for the rod to move with the wheels, thus causing the immense amount of pressure, and a 6-volt motor could not endure such weight. However, I realized that it was the weight of the fixed bearings that caused the motor to stop spinning. Thus, I replaced the bearings with straws to reduce both the pressure and the weight that the motor pushes, and it worked sometimes. However, the technical term of gear drive was seemingly not working this time because one single 6-volt motor could not push a car plus the entire circuit. Therefore, I decided to alter the manner of the drive but still use the strategy of front-wheel drive, in which I placed 2 motors on the front wheel to carry the entire car. However, the car still could not run on the ground and the wheel is only spinning in the still air. I checked the direction of the wheel spinning, and both of the wheels were rotating in a very similar direction. As a result, I realized that the car could not run because the weight the overall circuit has is heavy, and I altered my car into a 2-wheeled vehicle rather than a 4 wheeled vehicle.

My 2-wheeled vehicle (with the circuit):

At last, I felt like the best way to reduce the weight is by altering the 4-wheel vehicle into a 2-wheel vehicle, and thus it could reduce the overall weight of the vehicle model. After cutting off the majority of the cardboard designed, the only part of the car that remained is only the front wheel, or engine, on the other hand. But surprisingly, it did work, but the vehicle only traveled for a few centimeters, frankly, was incredibly short. It is explicit that this consequence was caused by the immense weight of the car since the 2-wheel car could run for a longer distance compared to its predecessor, a 4-wheeled solar-powered vehicle. However, my 2-wheel car still could not function properly because the thrust that both motors exerted was tiny compared to engines that could push the entire car, and make it run on the ground, and this was probably caused by the small amount of voltage that the engines received, or maybe the battery pack or the solar panel did not produce as much electricity as expected.