Thermochemistry: You Have the Power!
Project Summary
This project was done to help us learn about energy, and as much as possible surrounding that concept. We did this by making a machine that "converts one form of energy into another form of energy." This was extremely general, and that was done by design, because with this much creative space to work in, we had a lot of room to make whatever we could could think of, as long as it fulfilled that requirement.
Presentation
Proof of Efficacy Document
Types of Energy
CHEMICAL
This is a type of potential energy that is held by a solution or a material because of its potential to have a reaction. This is similar to gravitational energy, where it is not active energy, but is energy that can be released. This exists in our voltaic pile, where the Zinc and Copper both hold the potential to react with outside things.
eLECTRICAL
Electrical energy can also be found in our battery, but if chemical energy can be likened to gravitational potential energy, then electrical energy would be like the kinetic energy released when a ball is dropped. After a reaction actually occurs, electrons are released, and those electrons are what can actually be utilized in the circuit.
THERMAL
As you may have seen in our presentation, our original plan was to use our battery to power a small handheld fan. Since the fan has to spin on joints and around axles, there is going to be at least a little friction. This friction releases energy mostly in the form of thermal energy. If you file a piece of metal really quickly, it will heat up for this same reason.
kINETIC
This is another type of energy that you are probably already very familiar with. Kinetic energy comes simply from something moving, and our fan would have had its blades moving, which is about as clear of an energy type as you can get.
LIGHT
This is an energy type that is easy to identify, but very difficult to explain. For example, our final goal was to light an LED, which obviously gives off light, and that light obviously has energy, as it takes energy to produce it, but when the question "Well how is the light produced?" arises, things get a lot more complicated. To make this as simple as possible, light energy is made of of photons, which are tiny little bits of light that fly out of the LED, and those photons are created whenever an electron goes through the LED and loses energy. How the LED makes the electron lose energy is beyond this explanation, but as each electron going through the circuit moves through the LED, it jumps down an energy level and shoots off a photon at the same time. All of these photons make the light have a constant glow. (Fun fact: That process is called electroluminescence, which, when said, will automatically raise your IQ by 5 points.)
Other Concepts
Anode
The negative side of the battery, which is the side that the electrons flow out of. The anode for one of our voltaic cells was the small square of zinc.
cathode
The positive side of the battery, which is the side that the electrons flow in to. The cathode for one of our voltaic cells was the small square of copper.
oxidation
A chemical reaction in which electrons are lost, which for our battery is the reaction where the copper cathode loses electrons.
reduction
A chemical reaction in which electrons are gained, which for our battery is the reaction where the zinc anode gains electrons.
Voltage
A measure of potential difference between two electrodes. This is essentially the total energy that a battery is producing.
Current
The rate at which electricity flows. A common analogy made to tie voltage and current is water flowing from a wide tube into a smaller tube. The amount of water flowing in the big tube is the voltage, and the width of the size of the smaller tube is the current. If voltage is too low, it doesn't matter how high your current is, and if current is really low, it doesn't matter how high your voltage is.
Reflection
The members in our group for this project all worked really well together and did a very good job at keeping each other on task. We were all able to work on different parts of the project, but communicated enough with each where all of the parts fit together by the end. Our group could have probably worked more taking a couple steps back every time we had to fix something. If we had implemented this kind of critical thinking earlier on, we probably could have identified most of the issues to come and solved them all before a test, rather than after.
On the personal side of things, I was in charge of researching everything about how every part of our project worked, and I feel I did a very good job when it came to understanding what was going on. I set goals for myself to meet, and ensured that if I didn't understand anything, that I would take whatever steps were needed to figure it out, and I was able to successfully do that. The main issue that I now see with how I did my research was communicating what I learned to the rest of my team. On presentation day, any questions that were asked had to be answered by me, but I should have seen at the start of the project that my job wasn't to learn how our project worked, but rather to teach my group how our project worked, which would also entail learning it for myself first.
Although our final product wasn't functional, I feel that this project went very smoothly. We had a strong image in our group of how we wanted each day to happen, and each one of us pushed ourselves to reach that image.
On the personal side of things, I was in charge of researching everything about how every part of our project worked, and I feel I did a very good job when it came to understanding what was going on. I set goals for myself to meet, and ensured that if I didn't understand anything, that I would take whatever steps were needed to figure it out, and I was able to successfully do that. The main issue that I now see with how I did my research was communicating what I learned to the rest of my team. On presentation day, any questions that were asked had to be answered by me, but I should have seen at the start of the project that my job wasn't to learn how our project worked, but rather to teach my group how our project worked, which would also entail learning it for myself first.
Although our final product wasn't functional, I feel that this project went very smoothly. We had a strong image in our group of how we wanted each day to happen, and each one of us pushed ourselves to reach that image.