Michael+R+SFLOM

Wiki Entry 1 Electricity on Mars

Electricity is made up of positive and negative charges. The two different charges attract the opposite charge like a negative attracts a positive and vise verse. There are three different types of electricity. The first type of electricity is called static electricity. To have Static electricity the electrons have to be still on an insulator. An insulator is a thing that doesn't conduct electricity. An example of static electricity is rubbing a balloon on your head and then sticking it on to the wall. The balloon will stay because of the electrons being attracted to the protons on the wall and the electrons can't move on the balloon because the balloon is an insulator. The second type of electricity is Current. To have current you have to have a conductor. A conductor is a metal that allows electricity to pass through it and out the other side. The metal creates a path that the electricity can follow and be controlled. An example of a current is when a lamp is plugged into a wall socket the electricity flows through the wire, through the light bulb and back out. The third type of energy is electric discharge. It can travel any where there is a conductor or semi conductor and it is the most dangerous. An example of electric discharge is lightning.

Electricity is used in all electronics and computers. Electricity would be used in the engine for the rocket to start. Electricity would also be needed for lights, computers, sensors, communications, and control panel. You would also need something for food and water. You would need a pump for the water, a stove or microwave, and freezer. You would also need to heat and cool the rocket and heat and cool the water so you would need electricity for the controls. Once on Mars you would need cameras and a rover so you would need electricity for the monitors and remote for the rover. Most of the power could be harnessed by solar power once on Mars. So as you can see there are a lot of things that need electricity and that it would be a very important thing to have when you go to Mars.

Wiki Entry 2: Magnetism

Magnetism is the attraction and repulsion between two objects. There are only three metals that are magnetic iron, cobalt, and nickle. The earth has north and south pole and they have a magnetic field going in between them. A compass uses the magnetic field to know what direction you are heading in. Magnetism is also used in when you drive because your car parts of your car are magnetic or made out of iron. When you stop at a traffic light most lights have a giant electromagnet under the pavement that sends a signal to the traffic light so it knows that there is a car waiting to go. Magnetism also protects earth from the sun's harmful bursts of charged particles and some of the charged partials go towards the north and south poles and create the northern lights and the Auroras.



Magnetism can be used to search for life on Mars. Magnetism can be used to decouple the different stages on the rocket using electromagnets so the electricity could just be turned off and it separate. Magnetism can be used for a GPS because Mars also has a Magnetic North and South poles. The same thing for a rocket to send a signal to a satellite or back to earth so people know where the rocket is and they know where they are too. Magnetism can also be used to keep tools in one place during the flight in the spaceship because there is no gravity and stuff would just be floating and a good way to keep things organized. Magnetism can be used in many useful was for the search for life on Mars.



Wiki Entry 3: Video Notes

In the video From Big Bang to Galaxies it talks about he beginning to billions of years later when galaxies were made. The universe started 15 billion years ago by the big bang. The beginning of the universe was very hot and packed very tightly. After the big bang the universe expanded rapidly and created matter. After one second it cooled 10 billion degrees. After a couple of minutes it continued to expand and it continued to cool down. Protons, Electrons, and Anti-protons were created because of the radiation. After two billion years ago galaxies began to form and grow.

In the video "The Milky Way Galaxy" it talks about the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy has a disk of 100,000 light years across and 1 to 2 thousand light years thick. The central bulge is 20,000 light years across. It is thought that in the center of the central bulge there is a black hole. Around on the outer side of the galaxy there are stars. Our sun lies half way out in the disk from the galactic center. It takes 250,000 years for the sun to rotate all the way around. On the other side of the galaxy a dwarf galaxy is merging with the Milky Way.

In the video "Lives of Stars" it talks about from the berth of stars to the death of them. Stars are formed by cold clouds of dust in interstellar space when a blast wave from an exploding star goes through the cloud and causes clumps to form. Each clump starts to contract and rotate and the rotation causes it to collapse faster. The energy of the falling gas heats up the center of the core making a proto star. The star spins faster as it gets smaller and clears the cloud surrounding it. Big stars have a temperature of 40,000 degrees and 20 times bigger and brighter than the sun. At the end of the star's life it creates a super nova explosion.

In the video "The Sun" it talks about our sun. Our sun is a star that is a big hot ball of gas. It is made up of helium and hydrogen. The power house is in the center and 50,000 degrees and very dense. Sun spots appear because they are cooler than their surrounding areas. Solar flares blast atomic particles out to earth and beyond. Luckily the earths magnetic field protects us from these charged particles and some of these particles make the Auroras. The sun's magnetic field is five times stronger than earths. It takes the sun one month to fully rotate around.

In the video "The History of the Solar System" talks about how our solar system was formed. Solid materials came together and were called planetesimals and some when they came together exploded. The giant planets started to form first: Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn, and Uranus, and then they grew rings which formed moons which kept the gasses in the atmospheres. Then the four terrestrial planets formed including earth. They were bombarded with rock on the surface and their cores were hot and radioactive. The cooler rock rose to the surface and cooled and formed the crust. Earth formed it's atmosphere later on. Icy planetesibles that get close to the sun turn into comets.

Wiki Entry 4: Rocket History The first true rockets were used when the Chinese were at war with the Mongols in 1232. The rockets were a bamboo tube with gunpowder inside attached to a stick that when lit it would fly forwards. The mongols after the war started to make their own rockets. Then the rocket idea came to Europe in the 13th to the 15th century. A monk improved the gunpowder so the rockets could go farther. In France someone discovered that the rocket could hit a target better when launched from a tube. Rockets at this time were manly used for fireworks and warfare.



Konstantin Tsiolkovsky came up with the idea of liquid fuel rocket because they could go a greater distance. The first successful liquid fueled rocket was by Robert Goddard in march 1926. The Germans made the V 2 rocket to hit London at the end of the war and then the allies came and took the rockets and then the engineers went to America and Russia. The Russians made the first satellite called a Sputnik. The next month they launched a satellite with a dog in it and the dog was in space for seven days until it was put down. The USA soon followed and created NASA. Since then we have been to the moon and orbited the Earth.



Wiki Entry 5: Rocket Experiment



The purpose of this experiment was to see if that heavier or lighter rockets flew higher than the other. The experiment was performed by making the rockets from the same kits. After the kits were made each rocket was painted differently. after the paint dried the rockets were weighed and recorded. Then each rocket was launched and two people measured the height of each rocket using trigonometry. The heights were recorded. The results were that the some of the lighter rockets flew higher than the heavier rockets. Some of the heavier rockets did fly high too. Rockets with less mass can fly higher than rockets with a heavier mass. My hypothesis was that our rocket would fly higher than the lighter rockets. My hypothesis was incorrect because the lighter rockets flew higher than ours and te heavier ones.

It took a couple of tries to launch the rocket but after a couple of tries it launched. The engine ignited and pushed the rocket off the launch pad. The engine burned for about 5 seconds and then it started it's coasting. After it stopped coasting it popped the top off and the parachute popped out of the body tube. The rocket accelerated as it fell towards the ground. It took the rocket about 15 or so seconds to hit the ground. The parachute got tangled and didn't open up. The angle gun said that it flew 46 meters before it reached its apogee. I think that our rocket flew pretty well even though the parachute didn't open. Our rocket had a red body tube, black nose cone, one green fin, one blue fin, and one white fin. One the side in black letters it says KFC. The paint was pretty thick in some places. To make the rocket to fly better I would sand some of the paint off.

Wiki Entry 6: Rover Drop

Our rover drop vehicle had a parachute to help slow it down and add more drag. The drop vehicle also had padding on all sides and a big blown up bag underneath it to maximize the impact time and the cup in the middle of all of the padding with the egg. We did this design so that the parachute would slow it down and that the padding would maximize the impact time so it wouldn't be so jarring on the egg and brake it. The bag underneath helped with cushioning but it caused it to fall over and brake the egg inside. The parachute worked but not as good as we hoped. Next time i would have something to add more upward thrust to help slow the landing. The padding on the top and sides could have been better. The egg was easily accessible so it wasn't a problem that we couldn't get the egg out.



Wiki Entry 7: History of Robotics My definition of a robot is: A machine that can be programmed to do human tasks. Robotics have been around since the ancient world. They were developed more in the industrial revolution to make things better and faster than by hand. The first modern robots were used in factories for industrial purposes. Robotics make travel easier and faster. They make your clothes and help pilot ships and planes and now drive cars all on their own.

In the 4 century Archytas, a Greek mathematician, had a steam powered mechanical bird. Leonardo Di Vinci designed the first humanoid robot in 1495. In 1801 Joseph Jacquard built an automated loom that used punch cards to control it. The first remotely operated vehicles were made in the 1870's which were torpedoes. The word robot was first used in the 1920's and is still used today. The military uses robots to fight and children have robots for toys that can talk and walk around.

Wiki Entry 8: Programming Robots

The definition of a motor: a machine, especially one powered by electricity or internal combustion, that supplies motive power for a vehicle or for some other device with moving parts. Motors are used to move an object and humans. Humans' motors are their legs because it allows us to move in a certain direction. Motors allow something to move forwards, backwards, left, and right. There are two different types of turns, a point turn which is nice to move around on top of a table an make turns, a curve turn is used for keeping speed and go around gradual turns. Race cars use this type of turn. Motors are in cars, trains, planes, helicopters, boats, and humans. In our robotics unit the nxt mindstorms had motors too.

The definition of a sensor: a device that detects or measures a physical property and records, indicates, or otherwise responds to it. Animals, humans, robots, and weapons all have sensors that they use. There are many different types of sensors, touch, sound, taste, ultrasonic, chemical, smell, pressure, heat, and many more. Sensors are attached to robots to help them know where to go and where things are so they don't bump into them. Robots with sensors can go where humans can't go like in space and other planets and collect data and images. Sensors are also used to help no if something is safe to go in like a carbon dioxide monitor. Almost every house has one so no one is killed of carbon dioxide. In houses there are also smoke detectors that send an alarm to the fire department and make a sound so people can get out of the house before they are trapped by fire. In our robotics unit the nxt mindstorms robots had sensors so we could complete the challenges like this light sensor.

Wiki Entry 9: Geology on Mars

There are many different types of minerals and different ways to identify them. The first way to identify them is a streak test. In a streak test a rock or mineral is dragged across a tile and a streak is left behind. Another test is the magnetic test where you put a magnet over it to see if it is magnetic because not all rocks are magnetic. Another is the light refraction test where you place it over text in a book and it will distort it. Another way to identify a mineral or rock is the acid test where you put Hydrochloric acid on a rock or mineral and some will bubble when they come into contact. Another way to identify a rock or mineral is the hardness test where you scratch things to see how hard something is. A geologist on Earth would do these tests if they are mining or come across a rock that they don't know what it is and want to find out. Curiosity, the rover that is currently roving mars has a mini lab underneath it to identify the different minerals and rocks on mars. The rover can drill into rocks and collect the powder and transfer it into a mini lab. The mini lab can identify the rocks and minerals and tell if mars was habitable. The information tat the rover collects also tells us what mars is made up of. The information from the mini lab is sent back to Earth for scientist to understand mars better.