Today was the last day of research before heading home. Teachers and scientists helped each group set goals for the rest of the projects. Students, teachers, and scientists are excited about their research and look forward to continuing the projects and presenting conclusions next month.
After four days here at CVI working on our project, the session is ending and we are all about to leave until April 24.
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On the second day of YSDE Josh was talking to us about what we were going to do through the day, and in this talk a Space Turtle came up. Now obviously that is a little far fetched, but lets be honest. It would be pretty spectacular! So just in a not so formal way to say thanks to Josh for the opportunity that was presented, here is a space turtle!
In the last day and a half of this YSDE session, the group wrapped things up, asked teachers to do a brainstorming activity within their classes to help increase our sample size. This first session has been a blast for our group, we have learned a tremendous amount of knowledge on social loafing. We can’t wait for the next session in a couple of weeks. Although there is a lot of work still to be done, we have been working very hard.
Day four:
We continued our internet research today, and gathered more information on the cost and practicability of solar in West Virginia. After we completed our computer research, we migrated outside and worked with our solar panels again.
There was much more sun than we have had all week. We actually created enough power to “fry” one of the electronic buzzers we were using! We experimented with different methods of wiring our panels together, and how we would measure output of our panels when we start recording results. Eventually we decided on using voltmeters and buzzers (we will rate the strength of the noise the buzzer produces from one to five.)
Day 5.
Today, the weather is cloudy 87% coverage, humidity of 66%, and UV of 3. All three of these factors influence how much power in watts we will receive in the solar panels. We will test how the cloud affects the wattage produced by the panel. We will listen to the sound the buzzers create and determine from that how much power the solar panel has.
In the meantime while we are all away from each other, we will keep in contact and use volt meters to measure the power from the panels. We look forward to more research and can’t wait to come back!
For our research, today, we had to leave the safety of our lab and venture to the great outdoors! 
We went to the Black Water Sledding Park to test the effects of friction on velocity. To get down the hill, we had to overcome static friction (resistance to movement) and sliding friction (object in sliding motion). We used two different sleds, each with a different shape and sledding surface design. 
We found that the sled with the least material on the sledding surface produced the greatest velocity. The flat-bottomed sled had a greater surface area on the snow, which, we believe, caused a greater sliding friction. This showed us that friction will play a role in our model and we should do our best to reduce friction to make a more efficient model.
After we got back to the lab, we continued our work building our roller coaster model.
Even though it was still cold outside, the sun decided to come out and give the research groups an opportunity to collect data and work on the projects outside. One of the groups was able to go sleigh riding which gave them opportunity to measure the distance they were able to go down the hill, along with many other calculations. Another group was able to make a practical fort for shelter. This is a scenario of how to live in the wild. The sunny weather made it a great day for fieldwork.
One might think that it sounds really complicated to program an arduino board to send someone an email alert….and they’d be right! After completing a successful alarm system yesterday, today our job was to program in the emailing feature!
On the 23 of March, we split up into teams according to area of expertise, the sling shot, debris hut, and ultimately fire making.
Yesterday was about exploring our arduino’s possibilties; today was about putting them to work! After collaborating with eachother to design our S.H.I.E.L.D. alarm circuit, we began to actually build it.
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