Electronic Canary

Our project was to test two cars- a Prius ( a hybrid car) and a normal car (a Toyata Rav 4) to see which one will emit more CO (carbon monoxide). we built an air tight box in which the CO will be trapped. After that, we tested each car for its carbon monoxide by attaching a tube to the car exhausts, the other ends of the tube going into a hole in the box. Since the Arduino and the CO senor were in the box, we were able to get an accurate reading. Our original hypothesis was that the Rav 4 would emit more CO than the Prius. Our data / results supported our hypothesis. The Rav 4 emitted 532  PPM of CO (our highest reading) where as the Prius emitted no CO.  The CO went up as time progressed. We determined that if you were in the car and the exhaust was leaking into it,  you will most likely suffer severe headaches, nausea and fatigue after a short period of time.  You have a chance of death after three hours.

The original purpose of our project was to find out if a regular car or a hybrid car emitted more carbon monoxide (CO).

The results of our experiment was that the regular car (RAV 4) emitted more CO then the hybrid car (Pruis).  The Pruis emitted no CO and the RAV 4 emitted 532 PPM (Parts Per Million) of CO.  This proved our hypothesis that a hybrid car would emit less CO than a regular car.

The purpose of our exit project was to find out which car gives off less CO (Carbon Monoxide) a hybrid (Prius) or a normal car (Rav 4). Our hypothesis for this project was that the hybrid car will emit less CO than the normal car. The constants in our project were the arduino (the CO sensor), the tube that was attached to the car, the container to hold the car exhaust so we can sense it, the amount of time each car was tested, and the procedures we took to test each car for its Carbon Monoxide. We did not have any control variables. The independent variable in our experiment were the cars (the Prius and the Rav 4). The dependent variable was the amount of CO emitted from each car. The way we measured the responding or dependent variable was by using the arduino and the CO sensor. The results of this experiment were : The Rav 4 emitted 532 PPM of CO (this was the highest reading we recorded) while the hybrid did not emit any CO. The results show that our hypothesis was correct because the hybrid car did in fact emit less CO. If we were to do this experiment again in the future or expand on this experiment we would test different types of car brands (Nissan, Ford, Toyota, Honda, etc,..) and find out which car gives off the least amount of carbon monoxide.

I think that the project is doing good so far.  We have met once to work on our project.  I think that if we meet one more time we should be done billding the CO monitor  and ready to test the cars.

A strengths that our group has is that we are all smart and their is not one person that is doing all the work we are all contributing.  Another strength that we have is that we all like the project so we all want to do it and we put a lot of effort in to make it a good project.  one weakness that we have is that all of us are really busy so it is hard to get together some times. One problem that we had was we where planing on using one of our friends cars for the project but that car became unavailable.  We solved that problem because my mom’s friend has the car that we need.