Overview

In order to determine whether the battery we were planning to use had enough power output, we connected the battery to a high current draw Radio Control (RC) vehicle. We used a multimeter to measure the voltage of the battery before we began the test, and we ran the RC car at maximum speed for two seconds. The multimeter was connected in series with the car and battery to obtain a current reading while the car was running. We recorded the minimum current that the battery reached over those two seconds. We repeated the test five times. Data is shown in the table below.

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Analysis

Our metric stated that “the buoy’s battery provides 1.25 Watts for a period of 10 seconds when the battery is fully charged.” However, we decided to make a slight change to the testing procedure, since the current reached the minimum value in the first 2 seconds, and this value already exceeded the metric’s power requirements. From the table above, the average power output was 51.2 W. This meets our metric, so we decided that the battery was adequate for use in the buoy.