Imagine a world of destruction and devastation. Any and all sources of electricity and power are gone and you are left for dead. The only materials you have is a solar panel, a battery, calculator and the knowledge of what angle the sun rays come down to the ground at. You try setting the solar panel up in different positions, but you can’t find the solar panels optimum angle. Don’t you wish you paid more attention in trigonometry class?

The first math unit in PLP 10 was trigonometry. This unit has been pretty tricky, mostly because of the lack of knowledge I had before diving into the assignments. First, the PLP 10 class learned how to solve trig questions and how to determine the different side angles and lengths of triangles. Throughout the unit, we’ve been doing notes and worksheets to help us understand trigonometry and to test our knowledge.

Once we had a good understanding of the topic, we moved onto to the project. The driving question for the project was: How can we use trigonometry to optimize clean energy technologies? So, we had to build a triangle to hold a solar panel that was tilted at the optimum angle according to the sun. We had to research that optimum and then use trig ratios to solve for the side lengths.

But, before we actually started our projects, the class had a lab which basically simulated the main idea of the project. The class got into partners, and Lucas and I started working on our lab. In the lab, we lifted a board with a mini solar panel to try to find the optimum angle where the most volts were registered in the room. This helped Lucas and I understand more about the main project.

Anyways, back to the project. First I researched online to find the angles at which the sun rays hit the ground at solar noon. Then, once I had found my angle for a specific month I moved on to creating my model. I had to find out all the lengths for the sides for the model, so I used some trigonometry. This was my math:

Solving the math was surprisingly not that hard. By the time we started the project I had a pretty good understanding of trigonometry, so I didn’t have any problems.

Then I used some old thin wood boards and quickly created my solar panel model. After, I got a cardboard box, mounted my solar panel on it, and painted the whole thing.

(I have not been able to take pictures of the final product yet)

Once the model was finished I moved onto making my project write up, where I described my ideal angle, showed the math and equations and concluded my project.  This took the most time for me because it took me a lot of time to format and personalize it.

This is my finished write-up:

Once I had finished, I handed it in and received a mark back. At first, my teacher Mr. Gross told me that it was missing some key components and that I had some revision to do. After fixing my problems I handed it in and he gave me a .

Thanks for reading my post.