Event 2

Technical Workshop

On December 4th the solar cup event had the first technical workshop, which mainly covered introductory topics necessary to build the boat. The High Voltage team was unable to attend all of the workshops due to member shortages, however, the most important two were attended: the mechanical workshop, and the electrical workshop.

Electric Workshop
There were two main parts to the electric workshop, which covered electric essentials that would be needed for the solar boat. The first part of the workshop explained how electric motors – both AC and DC – work, and covered power output in relation to resistances. All electric circuits have a peak resistance for their loads.

The second part of the workshop covered the basics of electric circuits, mainly exploring the differences between series and parallel circuits.

Mechanical Workshop

This second mechanical workshop covered two main topics necessary to the stability and floatation of our craft. The first topic covered was the Center of Mass, it is the point where all of the mass of the object is concentrated. To find center of mass you would multiply each mass by its corresponding x-position then add all products together, add all of the masses together to find the total mass, and lastly divide the sum of the products by the total mass.

The second topic taught was Center of Buoyancy, this is where the center of gravity of the water displaced by the ships hull. With this you can deter if an object will float in a given liquid.

~ by sshighvoltage on December 10, 2010.