In our 2-week engineering project, we have a wide array of choices that we can use for our energy transfer creation. Anything could work, from Newton’s Cradle to a Rube Goldberg, to a hydraulic engine. Below, I will introduce my current ideas and thoughts, and potential designs.
This video shows a double-cylinder engine that transfers electrical energy into a kinetic or hydraulic motor. This power can be then harnessed to use as pistons to lift or move some items. This would be a challenging task since the syringes would be hard to coordinate to smoothly spin, therefore, I most likely will not aim to create this design. However, the materials in this design are very simple and that may sway my decision.
Another one of my ideas is a battery-powered car, consisting of 1-2 motors and a switch, converting chemical potential energy to kinetic energy. Though this idea sounds easy on paper, it actually requires a lot of hidden work, whether it be safely routing the power or making a working circuit with multiple motors turning on with a single switch. However, this design seems like a great idea to demonstrate what effective energy transfer can acheive.
My third idea is a Rube Golberg Machine, this machine uses potential energy and sometimes gravitational energy to start a chain of events that will lead to an end goal being achieved. Usually, this end goal is a very simple task like grabbing a bottle or turning off an alarm clock. This energy transfer device is simple, however, it requires a lot of planning, testing, and also a lot of space. With further consideration, I decided that this can also create many examples of energy transfer, perfectly capturing the goal of this unit.
A watermill transfers kinetic energy to mechanical energy, it often uses the flow of water to harness and convert to energy that can be distributed and utilized. However, in a confined space it is hard to harness the full efficiency since we wouldn’t be able to have a full-size water stream inside the building. Though, a sized-down version could be able to properly convey the general ideas.
