Lab: Temperature Measurement System (March 9, 2017)

Date: 03/09/2017

Temperature Measurement System

 This day we started with the lab. The goal of this lab is to create a circuit with a thermoset so that it can change voltage when the thermoset gets hotter and colder. We used our body heat to make the thermoset hotter and released it to get it back to room temperature.

 This is the voltage without touching the circuit.

 This is a picture of the built circuit.

 When we touch the circuit the voltage drops by about 2.6V.

 We readjusted the circuit to see if we can get more voltage drop because supposedly we were suppose to be able to get this voltage to go higher.

 This is the properly built circuit.

 When we touch the thermoset The voltage increases. This is because as the temperature of the resistor increases the resistance should go down because of things like internal molecule vibrations. However, most resistors are built to withstand normal temperature change that is why we needed a special resistor to complete this experiment.

 This activity was the beginning of nodal analysis. This is where we use the current going into specific nodes of the circuit to determine the voltage output. Since we are dealing with current the terms we are using in the equation are voltage over resistance. This lets us solve for voltage. Each node has its own specific voltage. We are looking over the change across the component.

The class seemed to be very confused about nodal analysis so an example was hand written on the board.