This is my Reflect and Share Blog Post created for the Science project: Grade 9 Energy Transfer Engineering. In this post, I will explain my process, learning, strengths and weaknesses of my product, how my car met (or did not meet) my success criteria, the energy conversions that take place in my product, and the problems I encountered during the creation of this toy car.
Overview – Design Process, Sharing Design, My Learning:
My product is a battery-powered toy car. This concept was created through the laser cutter and soldering materials together on top to create a product that can ideally move consistently and smoothly on a surface. The intended user of the design are children between 4 to 6 years of age, and this toy is designed to be played with in any location, including outside.
Something I learnt from this process is the importance of planning and understanding your concept. The importance of planning was necessary as this project was supposed to take four classes to complete the entire design cycle. However, due to illness, I was unable to attend 2/4 of these classes. This made my planning for my project essential so I could create the ideal product in the limited about of time I had left. I also found it important to understand each individual part of the concept. Similar to design classes such as programming, the hardest part of finding problems in a design is finding the actual error. By understanding my entire concept and each individual idea that completed the product, I was able to decipher problems easily and recognise areas of improvement.
Strengths and Weaknesses (according to success criteria):
Whether or not my toy car was successful was dependent on the success criteria I established during the development and planning phase of the design cycle. The success criterion includes the ability to move smoothly across a surface, being able to hold together during its movement, being able to move in a straight line for 10 meters minimum, and being easy to use, turning on and off and switching batteries.
In terms of meeting the success criteria, I would say that my product was able to meet the criteria of turning on and off and switching batteries, as the switch was a prominent feature and battery removal was simple as it was also very prominent, proving this to be an easy task of taking the battery off and switching it with a battery with the same voltage. In conclusion, it met the success criteria of being easy to use.
As for weaknesses, my product physically does not function in its ideal way. Sure, the electrical components work, but the physical car it says does not move when it is switched on. Because of this fact, my toy car does not meet the success criteria of being able to move across a surface, and the ability to move in a straight line for 10 meters minimum. Furthermore, due to its inability to test in its ideal way, it was unable to test and therefore unable to meet the success criteria for being able to hold together during its movement.
Based on this criterion, I would rate this product a 3/10, due to its inability to meet 3/5 of the set success criteria.
Design Specifications and Energy Conversions:
This product is able to meet the design specifications regarding energy conversions by converting chemical energy to kinetic energy, with byproducts of thermal and sound energy. The energy conversions in my toy car can be explained by two Sankey diagrams. The first of these diagrams represents the chemical-to-electrical energy transfer. This occurs when the chemical energy from the battery converts to electrical energy and travels through the soldered wires. From this conversion, byproducts of thermal and sound energy can be explained by the sound of the switch clicking (potential to kinetic of pushing the switch down) and the thermal can be explained in the battery and the wires heating up slightly from the energy movement.
The electrical energy then travels to the DC motor, creating kinetic energy from the rotation of the motor. The motor also creates sound energy as it has a “whirr” like sound that is created as a result of kinetic and electrical energy. The movement from the motor makes it so the rubberband spins, spinning the pulley attached to the front wheels. This makes it so the front wheels spin, transferring the energy to kinetic energy, and pulling the entire vehicle forwards. To conclude, my product would ideally convert chemical energy to electrical energy to kinetic energy, with excess conversions of sound, kinetic, and thermal energy.
However, I came across the problem that my car would not move. This resulted in my product’s Sankey diagram to alter, as the car lacked the conversion to the car moving’s kinetic energy. The “reality” Sankey diagram shows the transfer of energy going directly from the electrical energy of the battery to the byproducts of sound energy (motor whirring), kinetic energy (DC motor spinning), and the biggest byproduct of thermal energy, where I could physically feel the entire heat up as the battery exhausted. This made the product able to convert energy, but not in the ideal ways the energy would be converted.
Proud and Problems:
I am proud of the final product, in the sense that I’m glad the battery and motor work and work together. I am proud of this because my biggest challenge was soldering the electrical materials together. It took approximately 50 minutes to solder the materials together and allow the motor to work, but it took longer after we glued it to the toy base because it stopped working… We had to wait until the following day in order to ask Ms Susan and Ms Kim how to fix the soldering and properly test it to gain feedback.
The other problem that I encountered that affected my product was the lack of time. Since we only had a total of four classes and the first two I spent planning and designing my concept, I only had two classes to actually build my concept. This resulted in me staying after school to work on my product and being unable to create my originally planned two iterations of my concept (prototype using cardboard and final using wood).
The largest problem of the overall product is the lack of function. Because the product itself does not move, it’s hard to say this is a successful product. However, I am proud that I have recognised the issue within this product and hope that in the future I can rework this product and create a functioning battery-powered toy car.
Final Product:
