Define

Our question:

Can we make our own phone chargers?

This problem will have different solutions depending on the phone used and resources available, so my partner Anna and I will use a scientific process to ensure we have accurate results and be able to compare them to a control group.

Neither of us are electricians, but we do have a good understanding of how to find reliable sources and put ideas into reality. While we will definitely be using trial and error to try other people’s techniques, I think putting a creative spin on this project will be what makes us succeed. So with that in mind, we will need to research a variety of solutions to our problem, pick out the ones that seem reliable, and put them to the test.

Discover

There have been many people in the past that have charged their phones by themselves. The most innovative would be by Thomas Kim, who set up a water wheel system that produced the needed electricity. His video is linked in the PowerPoint. He used a Pelton wheel system to do this, which is what the experiment will also be partly about. Many other people have charged a phone using either a battery, and few have even used a potato. However, it is possible that the potato methods are fake. It will be important to find the most reliable sources and use the methods that are clear and real.

As well, there are multiple online resources on how to construct a water wheel to power an entire house. They go into detail on how much energy is created, which will provide us with numbers to help conduct the experiment and figure out how it works.

Dream

Before settling on this idea, we had a few more potential topics.

• How can we make batteries in electric cars last longer?
• How can we prevent batteries from discharging in cold weather?
• How and why does wireless charging work?
• Is there an efficient way to prevent blackouts in PoCo?

We decided to settle on our current question because it was the most hands-on and would teach us a lot about how electricity works. Perhaps, knowing how to charge a phone on its own would even come in handy in the future.

Deliver

My partner and I have made a PowerPoint presentation to demonstrate the scientific process we went through when finding a solution to our problem.

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All in all, this was a very challenging project. With a restraint on time but a very elaborate idea, we had to put our minds to this assignment and get it done very quick. We consulted with my dad for a lot of it and he helped us get the right information. Building it was very fun and interesting, but again, required a lot of focus. The battery and potato methods were done on our own from scratch and were very engaging and hands-on. I was impressed with our problem solving skills, as we didn’t have one of our materials, copper wire. So we took apart an old pair of headphones, separated the wires inside, wove them together to make one thick wire, and then used it for the procedures. It was important not to make mistakes as we had limited resources.

The problem came when we needed to do the water turbine. We had a few problems, starting with the fact that our cooler pump did not get delivered on time and we therefore could not conduct the experiment. Instead, we took it into our own hands to further understand why it would have worked. We researched, took notes, and discussed the laws regarding the calculations.

For next time, I would make sure to get more of the project done in the first few days. It can be hard to meet up when everyone is really busy, so planning a little more ahead would have reduced some of the stress. However, we got the experiments done and had a great time doing so.