24th Grade Science Fair

[grayden]

Experiment 1
Observation

Vehicle fuel efficiency is usually listed in two parts: highway average mileage and city average mileage. Two numbers are listed because each driving style involves very different acceleration and braking profiles. Highway miles are usually driven at a reasonably constant speed with only occasional need for acceleration

Comments

[evilmonk]

what about temperature, tire pressure, and road conditions?

[grayden]

I mentioned "road type" in the original text. I'm amending it now to take into account car condition and weather.

[cynic51]

I've tracked date, price per gallon, gallons, miles per tank and amount spent for as long as I've had a car. I should really drop that in a graph some time.

[grayden]

After googling around a bit, I found a graph that someone else did. He was able to track his average speed over a tank, and he did some spot checks on instantaneous mileage at various speeds too. It's a neat graph!

[deafelis]

I am very amused, in a good "look what cool stuff he can do for fun!" sort of way. :)

[evilmonk]

sup with that one outlier with a mileage of zero?
also your citizens demand curve fitting.

[grayden]

1) The outlier with zero mileage was caused by service technicians resetting my trip odometer. I had no reliable idea of how long that tank lasted other than by date.

2) The citizens demand a lot of things ;-)

[towerboy]

This is why I actually keep track of the total miles on my vehicle at every fill up. The trip odometer is nice, but I can always back out exactly how many miles that tank lasted by recording total miles.