Hydroelectric Generator Project - Day 3 - Wednesday, May 15, 2008

Today we worked on our model and our tri-fold board. Again we split into groups, but this time they were a bit different. Today it was me, Elizabeth, and Lisette working on the tri-fold while Gabriel, Carlos, and Sara worked on the model. Again, I wasn't there for the whole time of the building of the model, so I am not exactly sure what happened at the times I wasn't there, but I do know the basics.
The building group (Sara, Carlos, and Gabriel) worked on drilling a new hole into the bucket so that the spoon wheel would fit properly. But this time there was some more trouble. The stator broke apart. So they had to fix it by gluing it together. It is stsaying in one piece, ao hopefully when the pressure of the water hits it, it won't break.
Today in the tri-fold board group we worked hard on the tri-fold. We got the perfect colors of paint and we started planning out what things we would have on it, and we started printing things out. So we got the paint and mixed it together perfectly and stuff. But then after we started painting the board we realized that rge dark blue didn't suit as the main color of the board, and the paint looked really messy on the board because the board was really bumpy. So we decided we didn't want to use a messy looking board because that will take away from the learning, and the neatness of the rest of the board. So then I called my dad and asked him if he could buy a new tri-fold board, and two different types of paint so that we could make a new board, and make it look neat. So we had him drop the stuff off after school so that I could stay after and work on it to get stuff done. So Lisette and I stayed after school and we painted the board and we painted little waves on it. The waves were because we are Hydropower, and hydropower is water. So that is all we have done so far on our poster board, but tomorrow we will hopefully finish up!

Hydroelectric Generator Project - Day 2 - Wednesday, May 14, 2008

So today we kept on working on our hydroelectric generator, we started where we left off yesterday. Today we split into groups again.

 Lisette and I worked on the tri fold board today, while the rest of the group worked on building the model. I wasn't there for part of the building, so I don't really know exactly what happened, but this is what I did for the tri fold board. Lisette made titles and subtitles that were going to be needed for our board. So we made those titles and subtitles blue because hydropower is water, and water is blue. so then we printed those words and out and used a cutting board and cut all of the words out seperately. We then got dark blue construction paper and glued the all of the words on it to make a cool background for them. We then went back to the cutting board and cut those out. Some trouble we had with just doing thhis was that it was hard to make sure that the lines we cut were going to be perfectly straight or not, so a few times we cut a crooked line, but we just fixed it by evening it out. But suprisingly we never had to re print one because it was so bad. All of our mistakes were pretty minor. 

Today the other group (Gabriel, Sara, Elizabeth, and Carlos) worked on building the model. For the part that I saw they got out the big orange bucket and started to cut holes into it so that we could place the spoon wheel into it. But we kind of made a big mistake on it. We were supposed to drill a small hole into the bucket so that the spoon wheel could be placed in. But we accidently cut a really big hole. But that wouldn't work because they were to big for the spoon wheel, so there would be extra space, and the extra space would let the water leak. Which would ruin the whole point of the project. So then T.J. from the Hydropower group from the other team helped us and we hot glued the little circles that we cut out back on to the bucket, which enclosed it. So tomorrow we are going to drill the hole the right way! 

Hydroelectric Generator Project - Day 1 - Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Today we started building our Hydroelectric Generator. Our whole group together started off by gluing a blue diagram sheet to a cardboard sheet. We then cut out the diagram circles which were now connected to the cardboard sheet. Although this sounds pretty simple, we came along some bumps in the road. Like when we were trying to cut we were accidently ripping some of the paper, and we were also having trouble getting the Exacto knife to cut through the cardboard sheet. We then broke up into different smaller groups. 1 of the groups started off by gluing magnets to one of the diagram circles on the magnet's either north or south side, depending on what the diagram showed. We then set that aside. Another group was working on wrapping coil wire around 200 times each. But they had to wrap 3 things around 200 times each, making it pretty hard. That group had a lot of pressure on them because each of the things had to have the exact same amount of coil wire, so if one of the things had 201 wraps, it could make the whole generator not work. This group had trouble keeping track of the numbers and making sure that the wire was wrapping around it correctly. That group also had a lot of distractions going on around them, forcing it to be even harder for them to concentrate, but they did it, and they did it correctly. The other group was working on cutting slits in a cork and cutting up spoons. After they made about  7 slits, they stuck the scoop part of each spoon into the the slits and hot glued them there. Some trouble they had in that group was when they were cutting the slits into the cork, the cork started falling apart, but they resolved that problem by hot gluing the cork together, so that it would stay as they were inserting the spoons. Another one of the groups started creating ideas for the trifold board. Although it was also hard for them because the trifold board needs some sort of interactive thing, or 3-d thing, or something that will catch people's attention and will help them learn about it on a fun way. So that is what we did today and I'm sure that tomorrow will be harder and we will come across some more trouble along the way.