Trigonometry, sounds scary, right? Well, it kind of is. To start off our year in math, we were introduced to the subject of trigonometry and ratios. At the same time, we were also told right away that we would be working on a math project that had to do with ideal angles. I’ll get into that later…

So what is trigonometry? Although I’m sure most people know about it and have probably needed to do it in math before, how many people know about the uses of trigonometry. Essentially, trigonometry is used to find the relationships between the sides and angles of triangles using certain values and ratios. Nonetheless, it was definitely a jump from doing no math in the summer to learning all these new mathematical concepts as soon as school started.

Back to the project though… This project is about finding the optimal angle for a solar panel based on a certain location, season, and time to produce the most energy. We would have to make a model of the solar panel along with the optimal angle, and a model of a house as well as some sort of written, spoken, or visual piece to go with our project.

So now to MY process of the project…
We started off by doing a little lab that simulated doing the project. We would essentially lift a board with a mini solar panel on it and try to find the optimal angle for capturing energy form the lights according to where we were in the room. This is what I got…

A little bit after that lab, I started working on my project. I immediately knew what I wanted my my design to look like for the solar panel and I drew it out on Paper53. Here’s what it looks like…

I then decided on my location and a season where it would be practical to use solar panels. I chose Minneapolis in the winter as the snowy season would already make Minneapolis so much colder than it already is. It would be cost efficient for people to use an optimal angle to capture the most energy with a solar panel. After I knew what I wanted to do for the project, I took to the Dollar Store and the Rona to find materials I could potentially use for my model of a house and solar panel. I collected a surplus of materials that would all help me in making my models and due to the nature of the store, I didn’t even have to pay that much.

The main things that I ended up using were:

-Box cutter
-Gorilla Glue
-Cardboard
-Foam Board
-Protractor
-Ruler
-Pencil
-Colouring markers
-Etc

The list endlessly goes on for the materials I ended up not using for my final product of the project.
I also did the math to find the optimal angle for a solar panel in Minneapolis during the winter…
(Latitude x 0.9 + 29) => (44.986656 x 0.9 + 29= 69.5 Deg.)

Although I had my measurements and angles ready for my models, I spent longer than I thought I would have on the actual construction of the solar panel and house. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I could change my design for the solar panel because I eventually realized my original design wasn’t going to work. I started with building the house so I could decide what would work best with the design of the house in terms of the solar panel. As the house already had 3 sizes to choose from, it made my job easier to scale the model against the real thing.

After putting the house together, I eventually came up with a new design for the solar panel which was actually quite similar to the original design.

After I was finished that, I put some colour and designs on it, labeled it, and I was done!
In the end, I enjoyed working on this project and I think it segued pretty well into what we were doing in class and maybe even what we will be doing in math in the future. I definitely learned about the somewhat complicated process of finding an optimal angle for a solar panel specifically for a certain type of environment/location.

I hope to be doing more projects like this in the future, but for now, I can say that this project was definitely interesting to work on and I wouldn’t be opposed to doing something like this again.

I hope you learned a little bit about the project and what I did!