- Design a water heater we made those by using cardboard, aluminum foil, copper tubing, plastic tubing, plastic wrap, paint, and water. First we made our base which was a cardboard box that had the bottom painted black and insulated to take in as much heat that was transferred from the light as possible and keep it . We were able to reflect the light into the the heat pocket by covering the sides in aluminum foil. We then added plastic wrap over the top of the box to act like the green house effect in the atmosphere around earth which traps heat in the space provided. We the put copper tubing through the box on the black ground of the box and put some plastic tubing on the outside off the box to connect it to the bottle of water which was surrounded by insulation and the dispenser. Even though it was suppose to work it was to cold outside and not really sunny enuf. The project was still helpful even though it didn't work because it showed that wight lite has one of the highest heating capacities out of all of them an example of were it comes from is the sun this means that this is the type of lite they use for solar panels.
- Daylighting Design activity. We learned that skylights and clerestory windows were good at letting light but the problem is that if the house doesn't have heating it lets to much heat out. The big thing that we incorporated in our green house design was the slanted roof wich many groups discovered from this project. These are the different types of windows. Light Shelves - Skylights Solar Tubes, Clerestory Windows
- Site Selection: Our group looked at many different places for our passive solar house. In the end, we decided to use the flat area by the stadium bleachers because it was level, solid ground, got lots of direct sunlight at all hours, was visible to people, and it had no trees to block sun, and was accessible. The Site Location was by the stadium bleachers.
- Materials Testing: In order to see which materials were best for retaining and/or reflecting heat, we created a lab test for each material. We tested every material that was going to be used in our project.
- Flooring - carpet, bamboo, linoleum, hardwood, ceramic, cork
- Insulation - coconut fiber, foam, fiberglass matting
- Exterior Walls - stucco, redwood, brick, plastic PVC siding
- Interior Walls - textured & flat drywall (black/white), rock
- Roof - shingles, sod, tin, tar,
- Building design In this part of the project we were asked to creat a passive solar house design. We made a physical model. To do this we used popsicle sticks to show the wood framing , and then used cardboard for the drywall. We painted the interior of our model house white to represent the light color we would use for our solar house design.
The rest of the information is on http://dariahoang.weebly.com (the power point)
- Conduction - transfer of heat through a material (i.e. when a pot conducts heat from the stove to the food)
- Convection - transfer of heat through a fluid (i.e. convection currents in the ocean or in the earth's core)
- Radiation - energy transmitted as rays, waves, or particles (i.e. energy from the sun)
- Heat - a form of energy (Q)
- Thermal Conductivity - Heat travels from places of lower pressure to higher pressure, or from hot places to colder places. This is why "coldness" is simply the absence of heat. The reason why your hand feels cold after touching ice is because the heat has left your hand and traveled into the ice, melting it. However, touching carpet doesn't have the same effect because it is not a good conductor, and therefore doesn't take as much heat from your hand.
- Fluids - a substance, liquid or gas, that is capable of flowing and that changes its shape to fit its container
- Pressure - the exertion of force upon a surface by an object, fluid, etc. Pressure is Force / Area, and directly correlates to depth. The deeper you go, the more pressure there is. Every 10.3 meters downward, there is half less air, and it doesn't matter where you are. If you're at the bottom of a 10.3 meter pool in Hawaii, you are under the same amount of pressure as a person 10.3 meters underneath the Mediterranean Sea.
- Archimedes' Principle - "An immersed object is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces." This principle that Archimedes came up with is still used today whenever we think about object displacement.
- Buoyancy - ability to float or rise in a fluid. An object must have a density less than the fluid it's in if it wants to have any chance of floating. Water, for example, has a density of 1. Anything with less density than 1 therefore floats -- like a cork, or rubber duck. Objects with a density greater than one, like a rock, immediately sink. However, there are ways to bypass this law, and that is by filling the said object with lots of air.
- Gases - a substance possessing perfect molecular mobility and the property of indefinite expansion, as opposed to a solid or liquid. Gases make up the air around us, which is measured by an instrument called a barometer. Gases have high molecular action, and therefore gases with higher temperatures have lower pressure because the same atoms are just taking up more space, and therefore aren't as rigid and able to bear down pressure.
- Boyle's Law - the principle that pressure and volume of a gas have an inverse relationship. It describes how the pressure of gas tends to decrease as the volume of a gas increases.
- Ideal Gas Law - Pressure x Volume = # of atoms x constant x temperature (P V = n R T )
- Bernoulli's Principle - In fluid dynamics, Bernoulli's principle states that for a flow, and increase in the speed of the fluid occurs simultaneously with a decrease in pressure or a decrease in the fluid's potential energy.
- Laws of Thermodynamics - There are four main laws of thermodynamics; the 0th, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. The 0th law explains temperature, and states that if two systems are in thermal equilibrium with a third system, they are also in equilibrium with each other. (Transitive Property: if a = b, b = c, then a = c.) The 1st law explains conservation of energy, stating that energy is neither created nor destroyed, and that heat is a form of energy. The 2nd law is about how entropy increases; as time passes, energy gets more and more "messy and unstable." For example, the sun gives of significant quantities of energy, but as it does so, it becomes more unstable until it will eventually explode. The 3rd law simply states that temperature can never get down to absolute zero. The idea of absolutely no molecular action is merely theoretical, as heat always exists, even if it's very very slight.
- Specific Heat - a physical property of matter that states the heat capacity of a certain object. Objects with higher numbers take longer to heat up, but also take longer to cool down. Objects with low specific heat capacities heat up quickly, but also lose that heat relatively fast as well. Water is an example of a fluid with a particularly high specific heat of 1. This explains why we use water to cook. It heats up after a while and keeps that temperature for a long enough time to cook through our food. It also explains why coastal cities have milder winters; San Francisco, for example, has a warmer winter than a place like Sacramento, or Reno. This is because the heat from the summer is still somewhat retained in the water surrounding the city and keeps the area from freezing over.
- Conversion of Temperature - Fahrenheit = Celsius x (9/5) + 32. Celsius = (5/9) (Fahrenheit - 32)
This project was probable the best one we have done yet and I hope more come along like it. I love how it was almost a full immersion into the world of architectural engineering and contracting.I learned how to make blueprints,scale models,and how to put together a house. When we were working as a group we were good but as we focused on the sections that we each thought were interesting and the ones we were good at the project started to move a little smoother. I could have been more exceptive of ideas in the beginning because it would have made the whole project run more smoothly. I also could have dialed down some of the ideas I had even thought I have heard they work the other people in my group needed to get their ideas in and we'll sometimes the crazy ideas work but aren't the best but I've learned to put the idea out there but not force it into the project. An example is when I said that we should use coconut fibers for insulation and kept trying to force it even though it wasn't the best choice. An example of when we were good working together is when we were coming up with the final design of the house. This project was probable the most beneficial project that I have incontered. In stem.