The interesting thing about this project is that students are provided with their own solar panel, a halogen light, and a DC motor. See it goes like this. The halogen light is plugged into the wall and is used to send photons to the solar panel. The solar panel converts these photons to power for the motor. This is accomplished by pointing the halogen light directly at the solar panel at a distance previously determined as ideal in an experiment conducted earlier in the semester. In this case ideal means the best distance away from the solar panel so that the largest amount of light will hit the solar panel.
This is how the power gets transferred to the motor. The solar panel has wires on the back of it…one red, one black. Coincidentally, there are two prongs on the DC motor…red wire goes on one prong, black wire goes on the other. Your engine is now turning. Students are then responsible for assembling a gear system housed inside of a winch apparatus in order to pull a cart. The future engineers must then determine the optimum gear ratio in order to have a chance of winning the race, because the proper calculation of the gear ratio will result in the cart reaching its highest possible velocity
Overall, the students new to the MEE program will gain greater knowledge about concepts such as engineering design, working as part of a design team, and alternative energy sources. The only thing left to say is may the best nerd win.
