User:Emabit17/ENES100/Hovercaft

Write problem/project Goal
Make the previous hovercraft build better and more lighter to make it hover.

My First Task
For the first weekend, our team planned to come up with ideas for a new hovercraft build. We debated on the shape that the hovercraft should take during this first week. We completely disabled the old model to see the pieces that we may still use. We are currently researching the physics behind engineering a hovercraft. The first concept is air pressure. The air pressure that will push the hovercraft forward or backwards. The second concept is friction. Friction is the resistance to sliding motion between two surfaces that come into contact with each other. The less friction, the better the hovercraft is able to move. Sometimes the friction can be eliminated by reducing the weight.

Summary of actual work over first weekend
We were able to find some information concerning the hovercraft. Some from this webpage The Physics behind it I found. The link talks about a much bigger scale hovercraft, however the concepts on this webpage are still the same for even a small scale hovercraft. We will work on implementing the concept as much as possible with thwe new hovercraft build.

Week1 Narrative
We planned to build a small scale model for this coming week. We are assembling and coming up with a list of materials that may be needed to make the the hovercraft. We are looking for a new battery source also. During our presentation, Professor Edelen made it known to us that we need to focus on the power being generated from the battery pack and the weight of the hovercraft. If the hovercraft doesn't have enough power, it will be able to move; same goes for the weight, if there is too much weight, the hovercraft will be still. We need to work on a balanced hovercraft that has both power and minimal weight to be able to achieve our goals.

My Second Task
Continue with what we have planned. Continue to assemble pieces for the build and actually build a prototype by the next week.

Summary of actual work over second weekend
This second week was unproductive. We didn't really get much done on the hovercraft. We had some part that we needed to get before starting to build completely. We need new parts for the hovercraft such as batteries and other important pieces.

Week2 Narrative
During this second, we gathered the pieces and continued to work on them. I took some pictures of the materials we were able to assemble together for the hovercraft. The fan has been working perfectly, we hope it can generate the amount of power that we need for the hovercraft to move.







My Third task
Record what you are planning on doing for the team during the third weekend.

Summary of actual work over third weekend
This weekend we actually finished building the body which is on Kyle's Userpage. We need to fine-tune it and get new 9V batteries to test it out for wednesday.

Week3 Narrative
Tell a detailed story describing what you did for your team over the weekend.

My Fourth task
''Record what you are planning on doing for the team during the final weekend of project work. ''

Summary of actual work over fourth weekend
Over the fourth weekend, we finished building the hovercraft completely with the fan connected to it. We plan to test the hovercraft to see if it works or not.

Week4 Narrative
During the fourth week, Kyle attached the triangular pieces to the base of the hovercraft. We got new 9V batteries to test out the power of the fan. We also weighed the hovercraft. This final week is a week for testing the hovercraft to see if it accomplished our problem statement. We made a new skirt out of tape with the help of Timothy Fries. We decided to stop there, we made big progress this week. Though it didn't hover, we were able to make a working model that was lighter than the previous model.









Complete Team Page
Hovercraft Team Page