Creative Engineering Design
Project Description
For our fourth project, we were given the freedom to come up with an original solution to an important problem. After researching a few problems, we settled on a local problem of the California Drought. This problem seemed the best because it was very relevant, since it is affecting us personally, and it was possible to create a solution to it.
Our first solution to the drought was to create a water collector that would collect rain water and could be used to water plants or be filtered to create drinkable water. The downside to this idea was that if wouldn't be as effective, considering the low amount of rain that we receive. Also, we wanted to be completely original, and after doing some research online, we found that many other people have attempted to create a homemade water collector. Since the water collector was out of the question, we came to our second solution idea: a desalination machine. This machine would have a system of pumping our abundant ocean salt water into a heated container, which would boil and let out steam through a metal pipe into another container. The final container would contain clean, salt-free water that could be distributed to homes and businesses throughout California.
Of course, we couldn't create a huge machine that would be able to distribute water to all of California in our given amount of time and supplies. So instead, we created a small prototype using a teapot, a portable stove top, a few metal pipes, and homemade salt water to show how our large-scale plan would work. Instead of pumping water from the ocean, we had to simply pour the salt water into the pot, which had a tube connected to the spout. Once the water in the pot boiled, the steam would condense and drip into a container.
For our fourth project, we were given the freedom to come up with an original solution to an important problem. After researching a few problems, we settled on a local problem of the California Drought. This problem seemed the best because it was very relevant, since it is affecting us personally, and it was possible to create a solution to it.
Our first solution to the drought was to create a water collector that would collect rain water and could be used to water plants or be filtered to create drinkable water. The downside to this idea was that if wouldn't be as effective, considering the low amount of rain that we receive. Also, we wanted to be completely original, and after doing some research online, we found that many other people have attempted to create a homemade water collector. Since the water collector was out of the question, we came to our second solution idea: a desalination machine. This machine would have a system of pumping our abundant ocean salt water into a heated container, which would boil and let out steam through a metal pipe into another container. The final container would contain clean, salt-free water that could be distributed to homes and businesses throughout California.
Of course, we couldn't create a huge machine that would be able to distribute water to all of California in our given amount of time and supplies. So instead, we created a small prototype using a teapot, a portable stove top, a few metal pipes, and homemade salt water to show how our large-scale plan would work. Instead of pumping water from the ocean, we had to simply pour the salt water into the pot, which had a tube connected to the spout. Once the water in the pot boiled, the steam would condense and drip into a container.
Content:
We used the Engineering Design Cycle in this project.
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Reflection:
During this project, I felt that my group worked very well together in terms of staying on task and agreeing with each other. From the start, we were able to eliminate ideas we all thought we going to fail, and agree on the problems with the most potential. Another peak of our group work was our ability to manage time wisely. Even with a few delays from a storm, we still kept our progress going by meeting after school. One pit of this project was creating an entertaining presentation. Although of presentation was well organized, it was hard to make our project persuasive. Another pit was dividing our work equally. It was difficult for me to be one-hundred percent helpful during the project because I did not know how to use some computer programs. |