Science Fair

Davis has found his calling. He did a science fair project this year and it was amazing to see him become so passionately interested. Michael and Davis worked together for hours and hours. Davis loves engineering and cars and is always wondering how and why things work. Here is what he did in his own words:

My project is about how we use electricity to power cars. It has motors, solar panels, diodes, capacitors, batteries and lots and lots of wires. It was very hard to get the connections correct. Sometimes the descriptions didn’t match the technical drawings. It took some time to find out which wire went where. After we built the car and tested on battery and then capacitor power I found out something interesting. The car went faster on the capacitor but didn’t go as long as it did on a battery. I learned that a capacitor sort of works like a battery in some ways but not in others. Using a voltmeter I discovered that the capacitor could hold more energy than a AA battery but let the energy out much faster and had to be recharged. During my experiments I learned about the difference between DC (direct current) and AC (alternating current) voltage and that DC moves in one direction while AC moves in both directions.
My parents have a hybrid car with 2 electric motors and I wanted to learn more about how it works. Now I know that each motor has a magnet and can put energy back in to the car when braking.