Day 14 - Determine Resources
By this point you should have a feasible design drawn out for your domino. Turn this in to me for approval. Once every member of your team has submitted orthographic drawings (top, front, right side views) of your design, I will sign off on the drawing and you may commence building.
The first part of building, however, is mapping out what supplies you will need to construct your dynamo. You already know you will have the electric motors and motor mounts (which we should have by tomorrow morning) and that we will need some wiring to connect your terminal ends to an ammeter. But you need to know what materials you will use to construct the rest of the dynamo. List all that information in your Power Anywhere doc.
Speaking of the Power Anywhere doc, note that this will eventually be an EDP report you will submit upon completion of the dynamo and its testing. It needs to have the following headings, in order, per the Engineering Design Process:
- Define your problem (including requirements and constraints)
- Research your problem (know what solutions already exist)
- Brainstorm prototype options ("all ideas are good ideas")
- Choose the best prototype option (based on your requirements)
- Implement (build & collect data on) your chosen prototype
- Evaluate your chosen prototype (by analyzing your data)
- coil
- a layered loop of conductive material (such as copper); current through this loop will produce a magnetic field
- commutator
- a cylinder with a break in it such that as it spins it keeps breaking the circuit for a moment to allow a reversal of current
- current
- in electronics, it is the movement of electrons through a circuit; this movement can be direct (flow) or alternating (vibration)
- dynamo
- a generator that converts movement (mechanical energy) into electricity (electrical energy)
- electromagnetism
- the physics invovled with the flow of electrons and their magnetic fields
- generator
- in engineering, a generator is any device that outputs energy in a specific form (often electricity)
- magnetic field
- the accumulation of force from millions of electrons aligned in the same direction, making the substance behave like an ionic element
