Define a Problem
Our goals for this project included
1. Have the best insulation
2. Understand how to calculate Net Energy
3. Understand what material is best for insulation
1. Have the best insulation
2. Understand how to calculate Net Energy
3. Understand what material is best for insulation
Generating concepts
Some materials that we brainstormed to use included using tin foil and wool to insulate the box. But i forgot to bring the materials so we decided to use wrapping paper, Styrofoam, small pieces of wood and some plastic parts. We chose these particular materials because we knew that each material had a small bit of insulation so we decided to combine each of them hoping to create a good amount of insulation.
Develop a solution
Evaluate the solution
For our lab due to time limitations we were only able to test our lab for 10 minutes instead of the full 20 minutes. In this picture the temperature began to increase but as we reached 2.25 minutes the temperature began to decrease. The internal temperature increased at first then began to decrease over time, but for our external temperature it stayed the same for all of the 10 minutes.
Logger pro equipment was easy to use and gave us very good results, it wasn't to hard to get it work with the computer, and was very easy to create the date table. The only problem we did have was when we first tried to create the data table the computer didn't acknowledge that there were thermometers connected to it. Thermodynamics was easy but the only hard thing about it was the calculations and finding all your values to use. Some skills i learned are how to use logger pro on the computer and how to create a data table.
Present a solution
This is the final stage of our insulation, in this picture we were about to hot glue all the wrapping paper together.
In this picture we had cut out a piece of Styrofoam and then cut in half because it was already bigger then the 1 inch. We laid it in the wrapping paper so that it would be able to wrap around it.
In this picture we laid thin pieces of wood onto the pieces of plastic. After this we placed both of parts onto the half Styrofoam pieces.
Conclusion
Some modifications that could've been made to our design, would be that if we had brought the original materials we planned on our insulation would've been more efficient. Some modifications that we could've done would be make the insulation fit into the box and make the insulation neater then the mess of a insulation we put together really fast. Some other modifications we could've done would be use fabric instead of the plastic material in the insulation.
Some of the other teams Qnet was better then ours because they thought about better insulation materials which allowed their max internal temperature be greater than others. Ours was one of the biggest because we only tested our data tables for 10 minutes instead of the total 20 minutes. Others were worse because others had also forgotten to bring their own insulation materials, so they were only allowed to use what was in the classroom closet.