Week 8 (Outside Lab) - Flow Rate Testing, Pt. II

At this meeting, the team continued to collect flow rate data and was able to create a standard curve for the end flow rate at one of the outputs. The team measured the time, in seconds, that was necessary for the output to reach volumes of 50 mL, 100 mL, 150 mL, 200 mL, and 250 mL, with three repeated trials for each. This data was put into Google Sheets and used to generate the standard curve shown in Figure 1. The curve is marked as "ideal" because the water level in the tank was kept relatively constant for all trials. The equation for the trendline is y = 0.126x + 0.512, with an R² value of 0.98.

Figure 1. Ideal standard curve for the time required to reach specified output volumes of water.

Using the standard curve equation, it was calculated that it takes 0.637 seconds to output 1 mL, which translates to 637 milliseconds per mL. This is the number that will go into the Arduino code as the multiplier for how long the pump needs to stay on.