Week 4 Update

As a continuation of last week, the millis () time function was introduced. This function tracks the seconds passed after the code is executed. We also had the arduino obtain the Voltage and display the TIME an Voltage on the computer.

Most of week four's lab has been spent researching the relationship between the voltages received by the D.C. motor and using it to find the speed of the car.

Terms to know:

• angular velocity- the rate of change of the angular position of a rotating body
• in the case of finding speed of the solar car, this velocity is in reference to the movement of the wheels.
• torque-the tendency of a force to rotate an object about an axis. 

For finding the speed, the group mainly focused on trying to find the angular velocity of the wheel based on the amount of voltage received. 

According to Doswa, a site dedicated to coding and creation of new things:

1. The torque of a motor is proportional to the current flowing through it.

2. The angular velocity of a motor is proportional to the voltage across it.

 The link above provides the derivations and manipulations to produce the equation:

Further research was done and found that the Grand Valley State University Padnos School of Engineering actually conducted an experiment involving a D.C. motor to prove the above equation was not only sound mathematically but also in physical reality. Their procedure and results can be found in this link.