Questions by our Professor Mentor

Our professor had to supervise 3 groups, so he did not really ask much questions for us to ponder about what we learned. However, he did check up on our progress and would normally ask what we were doing and how is our progress. So we would inform him of what we were doing and inform him of how far is our progress, were the results when we tested what we wanted. When we asked him some questions to improve our prototype, he did ask us to come up with a sort of instant release mechanic and gave us a few ideas to think about since we decided that we should try adding one, so that got us thinking about how we can improve it, however the instant release mechanic was never designed as we had ran out of time.

Our Achievements as a group! ✌

Photos of our prototype:

Photos of the process in building the prototypes:

Our presentation slides, as well as our video:

What we have achieved personally and academically as a group: Through this project we have achieved a lot in both personally and academically. Firstly personally we have grown closer and currently are able to understand another more easily. We have also learnt many team working skills and are now able to work in a team more easily as in communication wise and thoughts wise we are better at it now. 

We have learnt a many different things that would help academically in a student’s life. This include the skills of:

• During our experience in NTU, we spent too much time in thinking of possible ideas we can carry out, rather than actually experimenting and drawing boundaries that we could do. Thus, we could have managed our time beforehand in order to complete our work on time.

• Teamwork/Co-operation

• Quality of Work

• Communication

We modified the base to optimize the smoothness of the ramp, helping the car travel a much more further distance. As you can see from the picture the ramp has incorporated a a hinge to prevent from being pulled out or pushed out of position. It helps to steady the position of the ramp thus we were able to conduct the experiment without having to rearrange the ramp every time after each. The hinge consists of eye screws, we connected them together by stringing them together. This enabled the freedom of movement of the ramp while keeping it in position. We put in one of the eye screws by first hammering it into the base to create a whole and then started to screw it by hand. When it got to difficult to screw it by hand we use a chopstick as a lever. The other eye screw was super glued to the ramp. Thus forming the awesome hinge (copyright: Matthew Goh). At the end of the ramp we put one last eye screw, and we tied one end of the string 

Objectives of the project

The main objective of this project is to create a prototype that would convert only the potential energy stored in the rain water into kinetic energy, which is needed to move a model car to a distance of 1m. The model car should not be used as a projectile, which means it should always be on the ground during movement. 

Overview of our project

The main theory behind our project is that tapping on rain water as a natural source of energy is feasible, however, methods to do so have not been created or are still in the process of making. 

What do we know about this theory: We know that Rain Water has a huge potential for cost-effective power generation and that the methods to unleash this potential are feasible, yet not created or are in the process of making. 

What we do not know about this theory: We do not what are some of the feasible methods of harnessing the power of this potential in a viable and timely manner.