Outdoor Solar Classroom
Our class has a $3000 budget to design and and build a outdoor classroom. We have researched many things and have done many different labs so we can design a good outdoor classroom. That included about learning atomic structure, solar angle, site selection, and made solar water heater.
Hot Water Heater
The first lab we did for this project was a hot water heater lab. In this lab we had to design, build, and test a water heat that used sun rays to heat up the water. We used material like plastic warp, copper tubing, foil, insulation, and cardboard, In most designs the focus was to direct as much sun light/energy to a piece of copper tubing. Our design had a similar focus. Water would flow through the copper tubing. Since copper is a good conductor it absorbs and releases energy in this heat quickly. So when sun light hits the copper it heats up and then releases the heat into the water. We used foil to reflect more sunlight on to the copper and angled so it would have the most direct sunlight. The plastic was used to create green house effect. Lets heat easily, but harder to escape. |
Client needs survey
To design an outdoor classroom that would please students, teachers, and staff we created a survey to find out what people were looking in an outdoor classroom. We printed the survey out and made it online accessible. We asked people to take the survey. After collecting all the data we organized it to see what wanted to did not want. Here is link a to the results. survey
Site Selection
After getting the results from our survey we then started site selection. To decide where we wanted to build we consisted a lot of different factors such as amount of sun light, accessible to water and bathrooms, appearance, convenience etc. We had picked three to four sites then rated them. The highest rated one was where we decided to build.
Material TestingBefore we designed anything we needed to find what were we going build with. We also need to now what material were best to use. So we did material testing. We wanted to see how different materials reacted to heat. How fast would the materials heat up and how fast would it lose that heat. Would color effect the results. We tested all of this. The results are on this link Material Testing.
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Wind Turbine LabAlong with experimenting with solar energy we also looked into wind power energy. The wind spins blades and those blades turns a turbine which creates energy. We used fans and a leaf blower as the wind in our lab. There were two types of turbines horizontal and vertical. Different blade designs affected how many much energy was created. The faster the blades spun more that was created. We tried many different designs. Our lighter designs worked better than our heavier designs. Pinwheel designs created the most energy over all.
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Outdoor Classroom Retractable Shade
Above is a slide show presentation my group and I presented to a panel of judges. This presentation includes all our designs and blueprints. It also shows all the materials that we would need to build the classroom. Before making this presentation we first brained stormed ideas for the classroom. After settling on a general idea we began to draw blueprints and made a 3-D model. Then we found all the materials we would need and their costs. So when we finally had a complete design and the cost we took all the information we had and made the presentation above.
Concepts
- Atoms, Molecular structure, and states of matter-Atoms is what everything is made of there the building blocks of all matter. Atoms are made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons and neutrons make up the center or nucleus of a atom. The electrons move around the nucleus. When two are more atoms join they become molecules.(ex. A water molecule or H2o is made of one hydrogen atom and two oxygen atoms. When multiple molecules are together depending on how much energy they have and how closely bonded together they are determines what state of matter it is in solid, liquid, or gases. When the molecules are very closely bonded together they make a solid. When molecules are loosely bonded and can change which molecules they bond to then they are a liquid, When the molecules are rarely boned and move freely that is when they are a gases.
- Specific heat capacity-It is how much heat it take to raise something one degree.
- Radiation-Transfer of heat through waves, rays, or particles,
- Conduction-Transfer of heat through solids and some solids are better at transferring heat.
- Insulation- It's opposite of conduction-Something that is bad at transferring heat
- Convection-Transfer of heat through fluids,
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Reflection
This project I feel turned out great. The power point, model, and designs look great. The presentation also went very well. The group I was part of worked together really well. We were able to get a lot of good work done. At first though we might have came up with too many silly ideas, but once we focused and started working we did a lot of good work. We probably should have distributed the work better because we reached a lot of points where only one or two people could work on the project and every one else just sat around. I felt like I did too little work on this project. I also did not contribute in making ideas. In the future I plan to work harder and more on projects. I learned that I am better are doing more hands on work like model building. I also learned to make 3-d model both in real life and digtial.