SunDrum
-
The sound of sunlight falling on your ears! Linkage is a wooden spatula
(or popsicle stick) with holes drilled in it, slightly larger than the
dowel size. Small piece of dowel and tubing slices used to hold spatula
to pulley, which has an eccentric hole drilled into it. Screw eye at pivot.
Cork. Yogurt container.
Pass
the milk, please. 1/8" dowel running inside straws poked through container;
film canister lids for wheels and driven pulley; elastic band drive-belt.
Solar
Fountain.
Using a small water pump from Edmund
Scientific, one may, with two solar panels, pump water with
sunlight. (This is a good demonstration, but is not suitable for a permanent
fixture.)
Rover
-
wooden blocks glued to solar panel, screw eyes and rubber tubing shaft
retainers hold axles, motor mounting clip [TMCLIP] holds motor. Motor pulley
is TP10, plastic pulleys [TPULL38, TPULL25] using o-ring tires [O-RING38],
run with simple motor [TM] from TTS.
Mark Mateus' Solar House - a tracking device, playing with a simple
design to make a whole house track the sun. House is mounted on a turntable.
P.V. panels are wired to a simple motor so that light exposure on one panel
causes the motor to turn one way; and light exposure on the other causes
it to turn the other way. When the panels are equally illuminated the house
is at rest. Again, screw eyes hold the axle shafts, rubber tubing snippets
keep the shaft from sliding sideways, elastic band is the drive belt from
motor.
Solar
Boat - Amelia's design used styrafoam. Narrow rubber tubing holds the
propellor shaft to the motor shaft.
Solar Scarecrow
Worm gear turns toothed gears.
Both shafts held onto post by screw eyes and rubber tubing retainers.
Whirlagig
- complicated mechanism turns trophy model. Milk carton was used as a steadying
base. The coroplast is held to the milk carton with large looped elastic
bands.