Private AP Research PREP Journal by Paul Elliott

Instructions

26pelliott — 2025-08-08 17:47:31 UTC

Use this PREP Journal to document your AP Research progress:

Create entries regularly to track your research journey. These should be both text and video (at least one video a week).
Include your current research stage (e.g., Topic Selection, Literature Review, Method Development)
Share any questions or concerns you have about your research
Attach relevant documents or resources that support your work
Reflect on your progress and learning experiences

This timeline format will help you visualize your research development throughout the year.

8/8 Reflection

26pelliott — 2025-08-08 17:47:31 UTC

I plan on using my capstone project (building a go-kart) as a basis for my research project to find areas of research in small motor vehicle engineering that have not been covered thoroughly in order to frame my research question.

8/13 Reflection

26pelliott — 2025-08-13 18:32:27 UTC

First I wanted to say that my initial research question is something along the lines of "How do quick-swappable battery's impact the race times of electric go-karts." I plan on doing academic research on the question but also taking advantage of my capstone project and attempting to do testing on my own to confirm that my practical research corresponds to the academic research. I found a couple of good sources on not only quick swap batteries for racing applications but also academic research on many different battery systems for go-karts in general.

Chapter 2 Discussion Questions

26pelliott — 2025-08-13 18:53:27 UTC

What does that mean beyond simply writing clearly?

It means understanding and writing to your target audience, making your writing informative to those in the field. Writing clearly could inform different groups of people differently as the language and techniques used in each field differ.

Which role(s) do you think will fit your project best?

I think that I will be an analyst for my reader, as I will approach the question with facts and data, keeping minimal bias.

8/19 Source Reflection

26pelliott — 2025-08-19 18:15:50 UTC

I'm taking a look at this source that's translated from polish on the construction of electric go karts. The main focus is to get electric kart racing up to the same standard as gas kart racing. The point of this is to train younger racers to get used to electric vehicles so that they can be better trained for formula E racing. The way that this source goes about fixing this is by implementing an independent wheel drive of the rear axle allowing what's called torque vectoring, where there is an even distribution of torque to all four wheels. I don't think that the go kart I'm building will use this system, but it is still good to understand ways in which electric karts can be improved. This thought process seems well thought out however and could be beneficial.

8/20 PREP Reflection

26pelliott — 2025-08-20 18:19:31 UTC

The main problem that I'm facing is that electric karts typically have slower race times than gas karts. One of these reasons is that races typically don't go on for much as long, and this problem could be solved with quick swappable batteries. I could get others to care about my work by making it clear that electric racing is a more sustainable future, and the way to get into electric racing is through electric karting, which trains younger drivers. The main issue there is that electric karts perform worse than gas karts so people are less interested. If we can get electric karts on par or better with gas karts, then that should fix the problem.

Design and Analysis of Electric Go-Kart - Sangeetha Krishnamoorthi

26pelliott — 2025-08-26 18:14:34 UTC

This source gives a general overview of the optimal way to build an electric go-kart, with analysis and reasoning of every part or function. The introduction gives a lot of background information about go-karts in general both from a historical and an engineering standpoint. The methodology here is interesting to me because there is absolutely no guesswork, and everything is very well thought out and tested with exact recorded measurements. The second section is on material selection, in which they mainly use a literature review to find prime materials for the chassis, and what the limiting factors would be for each material as well as what works best for their use case. In the next few sections, it gets into more specifics with the design and optimization of the vehicle, including specific impact analysis, steering systems, modeling, calculating, braking and a conclusion. These all prove my point even more of the intense preparation that goes into the design and production of something like this, compared to the typical workshop design and production that Jackson and I will most likely utilize, with a lot less calculations and specifics and more guesswork with trial and error.

Written Reflection:

Thinking as a fellow researcher, I would say that my own work is much less specific and more focused on the real production with some elements of design, just with less focus on every minor detail. I really appreciate the amount of work that they put into the specifics, however, because many instances of go-kart design that I've seen aren't as focused on things like this but more focused on ensuring that it runs. This piece will be most useful in my research and literature review as it takes out a lot of the guesswork from my project and I can use it as a sort of crutch.

Concept of the Construction of Electric Go-Kart - Wlodzimierz Golebiowski

26pelliott — 2025-08-27 16:37:09 UTC

This is a source translated from polish and gives a few proposals on how to improve electric go-kart design. It is not the most specific, but provides some diagrams and schematics for reference. The source is also very focused on the reasons for why this matters. The author cares deeply for electric karting and believes in promoting the usefulness of it. These designs and improvements are also very clearly for racing purposes, even to the point where the author provides specific tracks that they wish for karts to do better on.

Battery System Design for Electric Go-Kart - Krzysztof Mateja

26pelliott — 2025-08-28 18:08:39 UTC

This source analyzes the optimal battery design for an electric go-kart, with racing applications. They take into account the racing conditions, expected power delivery, battery life, and race time. They end up settling on a specific battery setup regarding power, battery compound, battery life, size, quantity, and formation. This will be useful because it gives me insight on the current state of go-kart batteries with a reference of the research available today.

Go-Kart Parts List

26pelliott — 2025-08-29 16:04:44 UTC

Exercise 1 plus reflection 9/3/25

26pelliott — 2025-09-03 17:45:48 UTC

I believe that Drake is one of the best artists of all time. His versatility and ability to create beautiful melodies paired with thoughtful and fun lyrics create a sound that is unlike any other. His voice, creativity, and production skills have allowed him to make some of the greatest songs ever produced. The sheer size of his catalog and long time in the industry have yielded a lot of influence on pop culture as well as numerous awards.

I believe that drake is severely overrated. His voice is annoying and corny, he has a ghost writer, and his songs are nothing more than stolen melodies. His audience is all children, with inflated listener numbers. He has no creativity and has made many unlistenable songs. He can't stick to a genre, and every area he enters suffers consequences due to his insufferable music. His songs are too long to be enjoyable.

Reflection

I've put a good bit of thought into summarizing my sources, and read through them pretty thoroughly. Completely honest, I don't know what the believing game is but I have put effort into my sources.

Talking Through First and Second Go-Kart 3d Designs and Simulations

26pelliott — 2025-09-08 02:14:16 UTC

You might not be able to stream it through google drive so just download it and delete it if you don't want me on your computer

9/8/25 Source Presentation

26pelliott — 2025-09-08 02:16:46 UTC

9/8/25 Source Presentation Speaker Notes

26pelliott — 2025-09-08 02:17:35 UTC

9/10/25 Prep Reflection

26pelliott — 2025-09-10 17:57:30 UTC

This week I've done a good bit conceptually with my project, but not much on paper. To be fair, my project is also my capstone and I've spent most of my time on the engineering side of that, not so much on the assignments in this class. For example, last night I stayed up a little late working on my 3d model of the go kart, which could technically be counted as AP work. Despite this, I am slightly behind on my assignments. Not very far behind, but I still have about 2 sources to annotate and I haven't started on my lit review. I plan to finish my annotated bibliography tonight and do my lit review sometime after, maybe during the weekend. I've discovered one more source, but it's like 25 pages and It is taking forever to read and take notes/annotate. Also, I am having some issues with figuring out my research question. I know my topic for sure, but there are just so many things that I could research, but I can't decide. The main factor contributing to my issue with my decision are that anything I can do has already been researched. That, and the fact that it would be difficult to research things like battery setups with go-karts for a few reasons. First, I don't have an infinite budget so I can't go out and buy multiple batteries because they're SO EXPENSIVE. Second, I can't test racing times very well because I don't have a real track to race on. There are some workarounds of this, as I can set up cones in a parking lot or something, but the main issue is I don't have the budget to go out and compare technology because everything is so expensive, and I can really only buy one of each part I need for the construction. Maybe I can do research on which kart is faster or gets more run time, as I have a spare gas kart lying around and I plan to build an electric one. I'm gonna spend more time thinking about that but I don't hate the idea. (sorry that was long but I bet you'd rather see me overdo something than not put enough into it)

9/22 and week prior reflection

26pelliott — 2025-09-22 17:44:29 UTC

This week I have gotten to work on my lit review, and have done more work on brainstorming my question. Along with this, I have worked out my methods. My main concern now is that my research question isn't good. I feel like it is forced and doesn't span a good enough overview of all go-karts. This has given me a lot of stress, because I'm not sure how my project will work out with a bad question. Alongside this, I also don't want to change my question because it would result in a much larger workload, and I am already interested in my project. Anyways can you respond to this whenever you read it because I'm kind of stressed out. Thanks.

Q2 Course Goals

26pelliott — 2025-10-21 17:22:19 UTC

This semester, my goals consist of the following:

Spend more time focused on class work/being productive
Work on assignments ahead of time
Keep above a 90 in the class
Get Mr. Allen to like me
Start my data collection process

I plan to achieve these goals by staying disciplined during school periods. I can accept one half period of non productive activities once per week, two on weeks where I have completed major parts of my project or spend one half hour or more at home working on things from this class.

Prep Reflection 10/30/25

26pelliott — 2025-10-30 18:09:35 UTC