Solar Panel Pump

The solar panel pump group in Room 32 had a blast building the solar panel pump for our sci tech project. We made a pump that gets energy from the sun and powers the solar panel which works the battery. The battery then powers the water pump and forces the water in the tank up the pipe and squirts the water out and into a cup. When the cup is full it tips into another cup and tips back into the tank then it restarts. We had to get heaps of materials we got a tank, pipes, water pump, the massive battery and cups that we made from recycled milk bottles. The solar panel group were thinking of joining a water wheel to the pump but there was not enough space for the wheel. We took the pump outside and tested it but the problem was the cups were tipping backwards.  We fixed it with adding another stick through the cups and it worked perfectly. At sci tech we had a little malfunction
on our pump... the pipe fell right off!  We had similar problems with the other pumps because lots of children were keen to use them (which was great).  We fixed it by adding some glue around the base so it would stick.

By Logan and Izzy

One tipping bucket

Two tipping buckets - just like the Cuba Street one in Wellington

Oh no not again!  Crash!

Our cool water wheel

Putting the water wheel in the container

Mike heating our pipe for us to bend it

Final touches to our tipping bucket structure

We needed two sticks to stop it from tipping backwards

Finally it's working