Friday 14th March 2025

Today, during Greenpower we tried driving the car around the playground. First, we had to take the car outside by going through the hall and breakfast club. We had to run ahead and open the doors for the car as well. Once outside, (after we had done all the safety checks) the pusher turns on the car, the driver turns on the switch and, after three steps the pusher can release the car and the driver can begin the race. Although, halfway through Phoebe’s turn, the car broke down and we had to stop the lesson☹. We think the reason this happened was that the fuse blew up. The job of the fuse is to blow up if the circuit contains too much electricity. If it blows then the circuit breaks and stops the flow of electricity. 

We had to spend the rest of the lesson on the sports zone but hopefully we can get it fixed next week.

 

 

Friday 28th February 2025

This week during Greenpower, we focused on the safety checks and the method we would use when getting into the car and how to start it. We were separated into pairs and we would have one driver + one pusher.

The job of the pusher was to make sure that the person driving was secure and ready to race. First, the pusher must check that the driver has put on all the equipment that correctly. Then, after the driver has got in the car, the pusher helps to put the seatbelt on and tightens or loosens the straps if needed. Next, the pusher moves to the back of the car. Then, after checking the driver is ready, they will turn the car on whilst telling the driver: ‘Car on’ and the driver will answer by turning the switch at the front of the car on and tell the pusher that as well.

When the race begins, the pusher is aloud three strides before releasing the car. Most of the time, the better the pusher, the more likely that that team wins. Finally, we learnt about the role bar. If the car crashes and flips over the roll bar will protect the drivers head from the road and stop a certain death.

Friday 14th February 2025

This week in GreenPower, we drew our t-shirt design and body work in neat. Also, because we got a reply from Priory, we wrote back to the Priory Green power team as they said that we can visit their car and team. They told us that they have two cars called Raptor and Hunter. There are 13 people in their team 9 from year 7, 4 from year 8. We are really looking forward to meeting their team!

These are our designs so far...some of them need to be finished but we are working on that!!!

Us hard at work!

  

 Our team name

 Our team logo

 OOur team motto

 Our T-SHIRT layout

 Our side panels for the car

 Our front (nose) panel

Friday 7^th February 2025

Today in Greenpower we focused on the bodywork design of our car. We also finished designing our T-shirts and we decided on our font for our motto (as shown above). At the start of our lesson we congratulated ourselves for getting our first sponsor: Surrey Signs.

Session 8: January 31st 2025

During this GP session, we focused on our t-shirt designs and sponsorship letters which was our homework last week. At our discussion table, we merged our projects together to create the final copy of our t-shirt which Olly and Sam will be doing up neatly. As our assignment, we will be sending out our letters that we have previously written to our chosen companies, which were Stonegate, BP, Love your logo, Priory, Herd Van hire and Vodafone. We also thought about the details of the shirts and which bits we could put into the finalised design and what the base of the t-shirt would look like.

Session7: January 23rd 2025

This week in green power we explored the use of a fuse, a clever safety mechanism which brakes the circuit when there are power surges. We also looked into electrical circuits and how they work and th

eir needs (A power source, a conductor and a component.) This week we attached the seatbelt and seat to the car. For next weeks homework we need to create a design for our T-shirt and to write a sponsorship letter to one of the following:

∙ Herd Van Hire

∙ Love Your Logo

∙ Buzz Production

∙ Stonegate

        

      

   

   

 

 

Session 6: January 17th 2025

This week, we finished the build and have started to tighten the bolts and nuts in groups of two. We have also begun to attach the seat with ratchets and screws.

    

     

  

While tightening, we looked at the method of doing a nervous test, which is where we check the nuts and bolts twice to make sure they are fully secure. It is important everything is in place and tight for the car to be safe.

As homework, Greenpower were asked to do some research on electrical circuits focusing primely on switches, fuses, volts and amps. Next week we will be looking at securing the seat and seatbelt and also focussing on electrical circuits that we did for our homework.

Session 5: January 10th 2025

We were so excited to get back to our sessions after the Christmas break! We we eager to share our ideas that we had thought about over the break.

Aiman shared a powerpoint about electricity!

We spent the session building, focusing on tightening the bolts on our car seat. We then looked at the bolts for the main bar body and worked out that we would need to use the size 13 spanner to help us with this job. Firstly, we worked in pairs to tighten the bolts by hand. This meant that we could move the components a little if we needed to get other bolts in. If we tighten them, it may have resulted in us not being able to get some of the bolts in the holes. After, we checked all the components we used - 1xbolt, 1xnut, 2 x washers. 

  

  

We were really pleased with what we achieved this session - we are really showing team work during our session! It's amazing what we can achieve by helping each other!

Session 4: December 20th 2024

It was the last day of our term but we were still up, bright and early to continue our build. Today, we continued to work on constructing the seat and the nose of the car body. WE learnt more about the size of the spanners we needed to do the job and we started to get quicker at identifying the correct components. We were very proud of our efforts today!

 

    

  

  

  

Session 3:December 13th 2024

Today in Green Power we designed our logo. We also thought about our slogan and eventually came up with ‘One Team, One Dream’. Our logo is a wheel with wings (represents Hermes as a messenger and spped – we have names are car after this Greek God), race flag cheques around the out side and a road in the background (represents our vision to excel at racing) and a spanner on the inside (to show that we have built the car from scratch) with GP written on it (GreenPower).  We had several ideas but we all agreed on those as these were a selection of all of our ideas put together into one design.

    

Our homework for this week is to draw our logo in neat, write a paragraph about why we chose our logo, write Green Power in lightning bolts, write our slogan, research green energy and write a piece on what we learnt whilst researching.

Session 2: December 6th 2024

 Today we explored further into the engineering aspect of Greenpower. We spoke about nuts and bolts and how to use them when building the car.

Then we looked at different tools and the effect it had on the end result. We focused mainly on open and closed spanners and what each of them were good for. We figured that the bigger the surface area on a washer meant that there was less pressure in between the bolts and nuts meaning that they were less likely to harm the car frame. Nylox bolts are used to create a stronger hold so when the car vibrates when it is moving the bolts do not loosen.

  

After that we used Allan keys and ratchet spanners to put parts of the seat and the front of the car together. Many of us were looking forward to the construction of the car.

   

     

We enjoyed assembling the parts and were eager to see the car take shape.

 

Session 1: 29th November 2024

Today, we thought about why we wanted to come to GreenPower, the name we could name the car and our team. After a long time of thinking, we came up with Hermes, the Greek god of speed, for the car name. We met Mr. Tanton, who is going to help us in our journey of GreenPower and building the amazing electric car. Our team were thinking to do a space theme but then we disgussed that pollution does not get past the atmosphere and we are trying to stop pollution and bring awareness to others about this topic. As homework, we got an 'all about me' poster, which we have to draw ourselves, also we got given a think bubble, where we will write what we want to achieve in GreenPower over the year!!!!

  

This was by Sam Griffin