Do It Better Project
For this project, we had to take one of the projects we already did and improve upon our initial results. We decided to try and build a hybrid car powered by hydrogen explosions. Our original idea was to use hydrogen produced by electrolysis to move our car forward, we would fill a pvc tube full of hydrogen then attach it to our car. To start the movement we would unplug the tube and light the gas. This would create a huge amount of energy, propelling the car forwards. To create this electrolysis we ran an electrical current through a supersaturated salt water solution. As the current traveled through the wire, the wire connected to the positive end of the battery would produce oxygen, and the negative end would produce hydrogen. We could then capture the hydrogen in the tube to blow up. Unfortunately, this idea did not work out. The electrolysis produced a tiny amount of hydrogen even after a very long time.
Our second idea to produce hydrogen involved a chemical reaction. By combing Hydro-Chloric Acid and Zinc metal we could create a huge amount of Hydrogen and Zinc Chloride as a by-product. The reaction was highly volatile as well as extremely exothermic. To capture the gas, we put a balloon over the mouth of the test tube. The test tube had HCl in it and the balloon had the zinc and was about half full of human exhale. When we poured the metal out of the balloon, into the test tube the reaction started instantly. Most of the hydrogen was released in the first few seconds then continued in slowly decreasing amounts. After the balloon was full, we would tie it off and stuff it into the blast tube. When we lit the mixture of oxygen and hydrogen on fire, it turned back into water vapor. Now we had an explosion but it did not create much force. This meant the blast tube could not be used to propel a car. |
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Concepts
Conservation of Momentum in an Explosion - When the velocity vectors of all moving parts in the system of an explosion are added together the end result will be zero.
Relevance - If we are pushing air out the end of the tube, the tube should move in the opposite direction.
Water Electrolysis - The separating of Hydrogen and Oxygen in a water molecule by electrical current.
Chemical Bonding - The recombining of, in this case, hydrogen and oxygen started by a flame.
Relevance - If we are pushing air out the end of the tube, the tube should move in the opposite direction.
Water Electrolysis - The separating of Hydrogen and Oxygen in a water molecule by electrical current.
Chemical Bonding - The recombining of, in this case, hydrogen and oxygen started by a flame.
Reflection
This was the most fun project I did all year. Our group worked very well together, we were all able to see what was needed and work on that thing. Unfortunately, we were unable to create a car that actually moved. However, we did do lots of different variations of this experiment. We were able to gets lots of qualitative data but we did not record much quantitative data. This would most likely have helped us to determine the reason for the variations in our experiments. Overall I think this project was a great success even with out having the final result we were planning.