Stove

Over the last two weeks, we have been working on building stoves that would benefit people in third world countries in an easy, affordable, and most importantly, reliable way. We started out designing our stoves on paper individually. After we did this, we got into teams and began picking and choosing features that we liked in each idea so that we could piece together a design.

When we were finished with our design, we expected the stove to look something like this. We wanted a door that was easy to open and shut, a fuel storage area that was low, concentrated, and adjustable, and a chimney to help with healthier airflow.

As we began to build the model out of cardboard, we began to realize that we did not need things such as the legs of the oven and that instead, it could just sit on the ground. The cardboard model ended up looking like this.

As shown in the picture, there are racks that can be pulled from and pushed into the stove. These racks hold the fuel that when lit, would heat the stove top above it. Once we finished the paper sketch and the cardboard model of the stove, we were ready to move onto making our final stove with metal.





We were ultimately very happy with our final product. When we tested it out using charcoal as fuel on the rack with the middle intensity, the water temperature raised by 29 degrees Celcius.
The heat increase went like this
 Time   Temp (degrees C)
2:07       24
2:19      36
2:29      40
2:39     44.5
2:46     46.6
3:08     53

While we were happy with our results, we were not completely satisfied.  We would have liked it to heat the water a little bit more in addition to make minor design changes such as move the chimney so that it is facing more upward or fix the ability for the stove to be manipulated more easily. We hope to work on this in the future.

Power in Everyday Objects

*See work in notes

For this assignment, we were asked to estimate the amount of power that everyday items use. These were the numbers I came up with:

Power required for:
Light: 2-8 watts based off of previous knowledge
Tv: 100-300 watts, assuming that it takes up the same amount of power as a computer does.
Computer: 100-300 watts according to the computer adapter
Car: 20,000 watts
Motorcycle:10,000 watts
Fridge: 700 watts
Oven: 700 watts
Radio: 15 watts




** Assignment completed on Sept 29, 2013. Publishing date does not indicate date of completion.

Personal Energy Consumption

Over the course of the last three days, I have been instructed to track my energy consumption. This can be interpreted however I choose to do so. This is how I split it up.

Day One:
Lights: ~20 watts. I never turned a light on this day, but I shared lights with others (in buildings such as the science center and the campus center)
Computer:~400 watts. I used my computer at high efficiency for approximately two hours.
Food:~400 watts. Collectively I assumed that the time spent cooking the food that I ate and cleaning the dishes that I ate from took about 400 watts of power.

Overall for day one: 820 watts

Day Two:
Lights: ~100 watts. Combined with personal use and classroom use, I used many lights this day.
Computer:~ 400 watts.
Food:~ 400 watts.

Overall for day two: 900 watts

Day Three:
Lights:~100 watts
Computer:~100 watts
Food:~300 watts
Because I had a heavy work day in my text books, I did not end up using much external energy.

Overall for day three: 500 watts