Adjusting the Wheel Angle of a Bicycle Connected to a Moving Car to Induce Voltage

Overview

When a bicycle is connected to the back of a car with a bike rack, the bicycle’s wheels spin while the car is in motion due to the wind coming over and around the car. This accessible mechanical energy is most often wasted. The purpose of this research was to try to reuse that mechanical energy as a raw “generator” to produce electricity for the car through Faraday’s law. This law states that magnets in relative motion with a coil will induce a current. The ultimate goal of the study was to manipulate different variables involved with this conversion to maximize energy return. It was hypothesized that if the bike wheel were angled at 30 degrees (parallel to the body of the car), then more voltage would be induced than if the wheel were angled in other positions. Data was collected by manipulating the angle of the wheel (0 degrees, -30 degrees, 30 degrees, and 90 degrees) via the straps of the bike rack and then spacing 24 magnets (derived from results of original experiment) equally around the wheel. A coil was placed next to the wheel so that the magnets would pass under it as the wheel rotated. The coil was connected to an oscilloscope which displayed the waveforms of the voltage that was induced each time a magnet passed under the coil. The hypothesis that the 30 degree configuration would induce more voltage than other configurations was supported. The 30 degree angle configuration induced significantly larger voltages than any other angle configuration tested for both directions at α = 0.05, F(3, 116) = 1525.04, p < 0.001 (North) and α = 0.05, F(3, 116) = 1670.01, p < 0.001 (South), respectively. It was concluded that tilting the wheel at an angle parallel to the curvature of the car (in this case, 30 degrees) would maximize the induced voltage for the contraption and thus would be most efficient for future application.

Competition history

• AJAS 2019 Category not listed

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