It's Finally Farewell

Overall, I think this project has been the most memorable curricular experience in my three years here at Kamehameha.  This is how it usually works: study, cram, test and forget information.  The only reason high school students study is for THE GRADE! We don't care about actually learning because there's no time for enjoying and retaining knowledge for six classes.  When this project was first introduced, I was excited because project based learning is exactly the style of curriculum that I had throughout elementary and middle school.  Although this project has caused me quite a bit of stress, I feel that it has been a really great experience.  I was able to actually learn and retain information about electricity, far better than I ever could have in a classroom.  I have come to the realization that the real learning takes place outside of the classroom.  In class all of our labs and experiments are planned out to have a preplanned outcome.  With this project, there is no "preplanned outcome" or assurance that there will be an outcome.    Not knowing and being open to different outcomes and conclusions is what science is all about.

Places where things could have gone horribly wrong, actually had an unimaginable (a good unimaginable) outcome.  After the water wheel idea fell through, in a desperate act to save us from failing, Tiare contacted Revolusun via email.  I personally though that it was a long shot that they would reply to our email let alone donate supplies to us.  Well luckily, I WAS TOTALLY WRONG! Revolusun saved us from failure and went above and beyond in their efforts to mentor, help and support us!  Another thing that could have gone horribly wrong was my grouping assignment.  Luckily (again), the almighty Mr. Blake put me in a really great group.  We worked extremely well together and were very successful.  I couldn't have asked for a better team.  The last thing that went really well is the fact that the final result of our project was successful! We were able to wire an entire solar panel and battery system!

With all of these successes there were bound to be things that did not go well.  It just so happened that the week of the implementation of our project was the rainiest week of the year! Apparently you need sun to power a solar panel...and there was no sun.  Another problem that was especially devastating was the fact that our switch board had water damage.  Due to the wonderful rain our precious Peak Power Point Tracker had gotten wet and was not functioning properly. Luckily (for the third time), Alan was able to dry it out and it worked!

As I previously said, this has been one of the best learning experiences of my high school career.  I have gained knowledge about electricity that would have been impossible to learn in a classroom.  I have now have a pretty good understanding of schematic diagrams, fuses, voltages, amps, watts and batteries. What used to look like a mess of wires, now makes sense! And what's even weirder is that I actually enjoyed learning about electricity.  Once I spent my free period sitting in a room connecting wires, having a totally "zen" moment.  Besides the physics aspect of this project I have learned a great deal about my capabilities as a student.  I am able to take physics concepts and apply them in the outside world with an actual understanding of what I'm doing.  That is the most valuable concept that I took from this project, the fact that I am able to apply my knowledge outside of the classroom.  It is quite a rewarding feeling to do so.

To make this activity better I think that students should start a smaller scale bug list.  Not to say that good  projects were not formed from larger scale ideas, but it seems that much of the eight weeks was spent trying to define a problem.  It was really great to hear what problems teachers had with school because it seemed that teachers and students have the same ideas.  Unfortunately it was difficult to solve these problems with physics.  Now that there is a history of this project, students will have a better idea of what to do and where to start.

At one point in the midst of our project, I came to the realization that I was actually doing physics.  I was wiring negative and positive wires, connecting fuses and batteries and I realized that I knew what I was doing! Our entire project was physics based, which was really the best part.  I had a whole new understanding of physics because of this project.

Overall, this project has been the best and most successful learning experience of my high school career. All I have left to say is: IT'S PHYSICS BABY!

Cheepono, final blog post EVER!

This past quarter has been, by far, the most challenging quarter of my entire high school career. To be honest, at the start of the project, I didn't think that the things that we'd be accomplishing at the end of the quarter were going to be all that substantial. I went into the project not really caring and thinking that the changes that we made to Kamehameha couldn't possibly be that big of a deal, but I'm leaving the project with brand new eyes.
This project has really shown me the importance of putting your heart and soul into the work that you do. Never in my life have I committed so much of my time to any single project, and I can only hope that all of the work that my group and I did pays off.
In general, our project went extremely well. We started off a bit rocky with our initial idea of trying to build a water wheel. And may I just say, what the heck were we thinking? I guess desperate times call for desperate measures. Anyway, after that first little hiccup, our project really took a turn for the best. Thanks to Tiare's genius idea to email RevoluSun and their wanting to help us in any way they could, our project was made a lot easier than it potentially could have been.
The biggest thing that I learned throughout the course of this project is to have faith and be thankful for what is given to you. At the beginning of this process, it really seemed like RevoluSun getting back in touch with us was a bit of a long shot, yet everyone in our group really relied on them, and they ended up pulling through for us. Because of this, I think everyone in our group knows now that even if we're scared of what may happen, we should take the leap and do things anyway. Another really important lesson that I learned from this project is teamwork. As cheesy and cliche as it sounds, teamwork was the most important aspect of this project. Having all four of our group members working together cohesively was key to making sure that our project was completed on time. Having a tight team was also important for our group because we were all spending so much time with each other outside of class and school. We all went into this project barely knowing each other, but something about building a solar panel system together kind of brings people closer.
This was a really great project to experience right before ending high school because it showed us all of the things that we have to be grateful for. This project let me see just how much this school does for us and all of the opportunities that I have because of this school. If I had to change something about it though, I would suggest trying to make sure that the actual premise of the project is laid out really solidly. Because this was the first year for the project, there were bound to be some issues, but there is always room for improvement.
Finally, I definitely knew that our group was doing science. We were dealing with building solar panels right after we had learned about the energy unit and building schematic diagrams, so the physics concepts of our project were really clear. Our group was lucky in finding physics easily in our project, unlike some of the other groups.

And as a final thought, I just wanted to thank the members of my group for being amazing and for working so well together. We did it guys!! :)

Final Blog Post Ever!

With this final project coming to a close, I feel that this was one of the most unique, most difference making and one of the best projects that I've done in my years at Kamehameha. This quarter long project gave us as students a break from the books and the lectures and the quizzes and tests, and gave us a chance to make our own problems and made ourselves learn and adapt and problem solve on our own. And it gave us a chance to work as a group, which we NEVER do anymore at this school. Well for my group, and me we succeeded despite all of the roadblocks and speed bumps. It wasn't only hard completing this project, but it was fun as well because we got to do things at our own pace and at our own time schedule. For my group and I, pretty much everything went well because we worked effectively as a group and stayed on task all of the time. We sacrificed our own time outside of class to work on things because that’s what you need to do in a group in order to succeed and in order for everyone to stay on the same page. I don’t really think that anything went wrong; it was just the speed bumps that we needed to overcome, which we as a group did well.
I wouldn’t change anything about this project because it started off as Mr. Blake choosing our own groups, which was a good way for us to actually meet everyone in our class and make new friends. And how we incorporated technology to its fullest in this project using googledocs and blogger as well. Doing everything at our own pace and how we had control over this project to be independent is what made this project fun and exciting for me. I learned many things from this project such as working with others, working with ADULTS, and working on the biggest thing, time management and work ethic. Time management and work ethic are the very two things that we're all going to need for the rest of our lives and this project tested us on that and it taught us how to either do our work on time, or receive a bad grade. Simple as that.
When thinking about how this project dealt with physics/science as a whole, I felt that this project seemed to most as not a science related project, but in my eyes I felt that this was. We learned the problem solving process and as well as using what we learned in class the first three quarters to figure out how to assemble things. For my group, we used physics greatly, because we had to follow a tough schematic and then wire a solar panel together. So we kind of took our classroom learning’s to the next level and applied it to our project. Like Mr. Blake said, "its physics baby!" (everything applies to physics)

After the Symposium

We had our symposium tonight and I think that it was a huge success. After all the groups went and how we went last, we felt a lot better and more calm since everyone else went before us. When we got up there, it felt a lot easier than we thought it would be. We're also glad how Alan could come and visit us and watch us! We owe him so much because he helped us out and was the whole reason behind this project. We're just glad that this project was a huge success and everything turned out better than we planned it to be. Everything starts with an idea and it just keeps growing from there. The picture above shows what we started with, just a schematic, and how we turned it into a successful project that we're finally almost done with! But with this project and year coming to a close, there are a few more things that we need to complete. The final report is due MONDAY 5/23 and the final blog post is due 5/24! So we still have some work to do over the weekend and finish the report. And we would all like to thank again Revolusun, Alan, Mr. Kamalu and Mr. Blake and as well as everyone else for helping us through this project.

Nerves..

Tomorrow’s the big day. We’re presenting our presentation to not only our peers, but also members of the administration, family members and workers from Revolusun…no pressure. Today we continued working on our presentation powerpoint and script, making sure that it’s absolutely perfect for tomorrow. This is the day that our entire project has been leading up to. The day that we can show those around us what we have been working on for all of this time and what we have put so much time and effort in to. We plan on showing everyone that we really did help Kamehameha, not only for today, but hopefully for a long period of time if our presentation convinces the school to use solar energy more and to become more sustainable. We are also looking forward to the chance to thank many people tomorrow, everyone that has helped us complete our project and to get to where we are today. We will be thanking Mr. Blake, Mr. Kamalu, Alan, Revolusun and everyone else that has played a significant role in the success of our project.

presentation tomorrow!!

(us using physics outside of the classroom....weird)

The culmination of our 8 week project is tomorrow! I never cease to be amazed at how far our project has come from the beginning of 4th quarter.  I had never dreamed that we would actually be able to produce a working project while still using physics to solve the problem! The most valuable thing that my group will take away from this entire process, is that we are entirely capable of applying classroom knowledge in the outside world.  I personally feel quite comfortable with the concept of electricity.  What used to look like a mess of wires, actually makes sense now! Although we learned about this concept in class and took tests on it to prove our proficiency, it would have been impossible to have gained the knowledge my group now has without this hands-on project.  I'm pretty sure this is every teacher's dream; for students to actually apply what they have learned outside of the classroom.  The truth is for high school students, learning isn't about expanding our knowledge but rather getting the "A".  This project was definitely a different approach to learning and has allowed me to what I have learned so much better than if I had just taken a class about it.  And for this reason, this project has been a major success.

3 Days...

As our final project comes to a close, we look back and see how far we've accomplished. We went through the whole process of finding a problem, identifying it, and then thought of ideas how to solve it, and then making our prototype and testing it and then lastly deploying it! We as a group went though many challenges and as well as speed bumps when doing this project but we're all glad it worked out in our favor. None of this would have been possible without the help of Revolusun. This is our schedule for the next couple of days:

5/18- rough draft of paper due
5/20- presentation in the auditorium 4:45
5/23- final paper due
5/24- peer review/final blog post due

As you can see we still have a lot more to do, throughout the last 2 weeks! So we have to stay on task and keep on doing what we've been doing to strive for that A grade. The home stretch is always the hardest, so we must not slack off these next couple days and finish strong!

The Home Stretch

We're just a few days away from our final presentation in the auditorium, which means it's crunch time. Our group is just about finished with our slideshow presentation, although thanks to Google being down today and not saving my slides, I have to redo four of them :( Oh well, que sera sera.
On a brighter note, Mr. Ono said that he'd be willing to let our group have some kalo to prepare for the parents/faculty/administrators that come to the symposium to show the (literal) fruits of our labor. We're still debating on whether we want to chance cooking kalo, as it probably wouldn't be that good to give admin people itchy throats. Mr. Kamalu also said that he has some small solar panels that he'd love for us to use in the auditorium lobby as a display for us, so if we decide to use it, we'll probably make a poster board to accompany it and give some brief information on the panel.
Other than that, all we have left to do is our final papers and peer evaluations. Oddly enough, the toughest decision we have to make by Friday is what color shirt we'll be wearing :P

Long Live

Wednesday afternoon, Tiare, Beau and I(Nicole) went down to Mr. Omo’s to meet Mr. Agena from Revolusun.  Mr. Kamalu met us down there as well.  On the agenda: allow solar panel to charge battery so it’s over the 12V charge.  The likely reason for our previous problem with the pump shutting off was due to the fact that batteries were not completely charged.

When we went down to Mr. Omo’s classroom we discovered our problems had only begun.  So much for thinking this project was going to be as simple as following a schematic and implementing our design…that would have been little to easy.  Instead rain water had to kill our Peak Power Point Tracker.  The panel for the tracker (which is wired to the solar panel, batteries and pump!) is located on the top of a storage container….which is susceptible to weather.  It just so happens that these past two weeks (the two weeks in which we are to implement our design) it has rained every day.  Along with death of our Peak Power Point Tracker, Mr. Kamalu, Mr. Agena and Mr. Omo found another problem concerning our wiring of the system.  I guess we had put the larger fuse where there was low current passing through, and a very small fuse where there was a flow of high current.  That’s probably why the system had shorted the previous day.

When all of our dreams of not failing this project had died, Mr. Agena sent this email.

LONG LIVE the Peak Power Point Tracker

Waterproofing

Yesterday after school, my dad, Alan and I went down to middle school to continue working on the solar panel and see if the water damage that had been done was reversible. The generator had dried along with the rest of our equipment, allowing us to hook everything up again and attempt to waterproof the wiring as much as possible in order to prevent it from further damage. This included replacing our wire nuts with waterproof wire nuts which contain a special gel that helps to insulate and protect the inner wires and covering the generator with a plastic bag in an attempt to keep water from getting in. I also had a chance to invite and speak to Alan to our presentation, resulting in him giving us Revolusun hats to wear for it. Mr. Omo also said that we could pick the kalo that’s growing in the grow bed to cook and serve as part of our presentation to show our class what we created by completing our project.

Final Pictures!

These are the final pictures of our project when we went down to middle school and implemented it. At first it only worked for about 10 seconds and then shut off. But the next day we got an email from Alan and he said the problem was that the batteries weren't up to 12V and wasn't charged enough. So that's why it didn't work. Today we're going to go down and fully finish the project completely by putting in the new tubing since the one we're using now is just a water hose. After we put in the new tubing, the project is pretty much done! Because all we need to do is charge the batteries using the solar panels and the sun, whenever it decides to show up. We are truly grateful of this opportunity that we have and that we were able to accomplish it despite all of our setbacks and problems. The Revolusun company saved us and our whole project because without them none of this would have been possible. So thank you to everyone that has helped us!

So close...

After all of the time and effort that our group put into getting our solar panel wired correctly, Mr. Kamalu brought to our attention that we had failed to make a hole in the box that we were using to house our wires for them to trail out of. So our first main endeavor today was to rewire everything and thread all of the wires into a tiny hole in the box. Once we completed that, we took the solar panel and PPPT down to middle school to implement our design and test it out.
When we got down to middle school, it was simply a matter of wiring the solar panel to the PPPT, and then the PPPT to the batteries. We acheived this without much of a struggle, but things can never happen without a hitch.
The second problem that we encountered was that the tubing that we had to attach to the pump was too tiny. The pump requires a 3/4" inner diameter tubing, but we had a 3/4" outer diameter tubing, a simple mistake that anyone could have made. We temporarily used a spare water hose that Mr. Omo had hanging around to hook up to the pump. The fit was a bit iffy, but when Nicole flipped the switch, the pump worked and we had a flow of water running from the fishpond to the grow bed above!
This didn't last for long though. The water stopped flowing after about 10-15 seconds, which was really disappointing. Alan used his super, handy-dandy multimeter (our favoritest things ever) and noticed that we had a lack of energy from the switch and the PPPT. This was really odd to all of us because the system worked for a bit, and then stopped. Hopefully we're able to get this problem fixed soon, but in the mean time, the water pump is able to run off of the power that is stored in the batteries for about two days, and on sunny days, the solar panel will bring in enough power to keep the pump running.
The theme for our group today? Never ever give up! Even though we faced some serious highs and lows today, Nicole's bracelet kept us positive and we know that we'll be able to come out of this project successful.

image: http://www.joyjars.org/jj/wp-content/uploads/pic-negu-bracelet.jpg

P.S. I know we're supposed to have our own multi-media, but my internet is taking FOREVER to upload the video that I intended on using for this posting, so hopefully I can get it up sometime tomorrow :)

Next Steps

As we had prom this weekend and we all had a good time, its time now to get back to work. We are on that final stretch of things to complete for our project. Thanks to Tiare and her dad, we were able to troubleshoot all of our final problems and now we hope to take it down to middle school either tomorrow or tuesday to implement the final project with everyone there. We are extremely grateful for everyones support and especially for Alan and Revolusun for making all of these things even possible. We never thought that something so small as an idea could explode into something as big as this, and we're glad we took the opportunity to partake in this project. We must now double check everything to make sure it's all correct and then take it down to middle school and set it up! The only problem we have now is to find a good spot on where to put the solar panels since we can't put it on the roof of the building and on the sidewalk where all of the middle schoolers walk. Any suggestions?

Planning the Installation

Since Tiare and her Dad worked so diligently (ps. thank you so much!) and finished up the wiring, our next goal is to install the system by Wednesday.  Either Monday and/or Tuesday after school we are planning to go down to Mr. Omo's to install everything.  A pretty crucial detail that we are still debating is where we are going to place the solar panel.  In order to get the maximum amount of sunlight to convert to energy the panel needs to be at a 20 degree tilt.  There are very few places at Mr. Omo's classroom where we could place the solar panel.  We could place it on crates on the grass.  There will be shade created due to the power lines.  There is also the possibility of putting it on the roof, which would be close to a 20 degree tilt.  Unfortunately this would have to wait until summer for the school electricians to complete.  Our best bet is to put the panel on the grass and risk the shade.

Old Solar Panel

Completion!!

Today my father and I spent a while after school working on making sure that the solar panel was wired properly to the motor and batteries. It turned out that we were about 50% correct. He had to help me fix a couple of things, such as tightening wires and rewiring some of the wires. There were a few wires that could have been wired better and could have improved the flow of electricity throughout the system. We also discovered that there was a mistake in the schematic labeling, mislabeling where the pump was located which was easily fixed. We were able to wire the entire thing properly and even able to test it out afterwards, which was a success. The motor ran properly. The only thing left to do for our project is to implement it and test how it runs when being completely powered by the solar panels and batteries.

Finish line?

Though yesterday we were extremely confused about how exactly we should set up our solar panel in order to perfectly match the schematic, we did accomplish most of it…hopefully. We did not want risk ruining or somehow endangering the very expensive material that had been donated to us so we decided not to attempt to test it out until we were absolutely sure that everything was wired correctly and safely. In order to gain assistance with this I asked my father, a certified electrician who is currently in the process of attaining his contractor’s license, if he could come and help us make sure that it was correct and assist in correcting anything necessary. He should be coming by to help us after school tomorrow, which will hopefully be a very productive period of time. We are coming well on our way to completing our project and the only thing that is really standing in our way right now is if we can properly set this up to match the schematic. This is probably about as applicable as physics will ever be in our lives.

Slowly But Surely

Both yesterday and today were assembly days.  Yesterday Tiare, Mr. Kamalu and I(Nicole) started to get things set up.  Tiare worked on connecting positive and negative wires to the solar panel.  I cut rectangle in the lid of a storage container (which we will be using to house the wires) and installed the on and off switch and the Peak Power Point Tracker (MPPT250).  I also connected a wire between the two 6 Volt batteries in order to wire them in series so that the voltage will be 12V.  

Today, we all felt extremely...... confused.  The schematic looks pretty straight forward but it is actually quite complicated to put together.  Today's main objective was to get everything wired to the MPPT250.  First we connected the solar panel and the fuse.  Later we figured out it was the wrong fuse and now we are still in the process of connecting a new one.  We are also in the process of connecting the battery to the tracker with a fuse as well.  

Things on our to do list include:

-connect fuse to battery wire

-tap into battery wire and connect another fuse, the on/off switch, and pump

-connect pump to tracker

-get a clear hose for the pump

sources: BZ Products, Inc. MPPT250 Wiring Diagram

Day 1 of Assembling Starts...

http://www.apowersolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/wpsc/product_images/STP270.jpg

Sorry Mr. Blake for the online image again, we didn't get a chance to upload of all of the pictures and videos that we took from the interview, so the picture above is kind of what the big solar panel we got from Revolusun. But day 1 of our assembling began today. Nicole and Kyrie started working on it, and from what I heard from them, its going to take a lot of work and time to do this. When Alan from Revolusun was explaining to us, we just have to follow a schematic drawing that he gave to us and hook up all of the pieces, wires, pumps, panels, etc. Theres a lot of tedious work that is put into this process and that will require some supervision by Alan or Mr. Kamalu, or Mr. Blake as well. This project can be very dangerous since we're dealing with high voltages and acid from the batteries. We are very confident that we will make the final project deadline next week Wednesday. After we assemble everything, we will then figure out how we're going to hook it up and then where we're going to put the solar panel, since its so big. Placing the solar panel on the roof will probably be more of a long term project because we would have to build a frame for it, and then properly bolt it in, which we don't have the time nor the experience or certifications to do so. So for now, we're just trying to put together the battery and the pump piece by piece so we can hook it up to the solar panel and get it running by next week Wednesday. We will also be documenting with lots of pictures and notes along the way.

YAY!!

Today was truly a great day for our group. We were able to meet with Alan again today, and he brought presents for us! Well, not really presents, but he did bring all of the things that he and Revolusun were donating to us! We met after school down at middle school and Alan showed us the really great things that he had for our group. With him he had:
•240 W solar panel
•Peak Point Tracker
•new pump for the fish pond
•2 new batteries
•various wiring
•clips, plugs, and other odds and ends
and our most favorite thing in the world: SCHEMATIC DIAGRAMS!

Anywho, Alan unloaded and broke things down simply for our group, telling us the basics of each component of the entire system. He showed us the schematic diagram that he made for us to do on our own, which hopefully isn't too difficult. The diagram shows us how to properly connect the solar panel to the Peak Point Tracker, the batteries, and the fish pond pump.
Our group was truly astonished with all of the things that Revolusun donated to us, we were only asking for a simple solar panel and battery, but they really went above and beyond with providing us with everything that we could possibly need. The least that our group can do to repay them is the assemble the circuit correctly and to have a killer presentation at the end of this unit!

The pieces are finally falling into place

Nicole and I have been in contact with Alan from Revolusun and as Nicole said in her previous posting, we'll be getting our solar panels on Monday! This is great news for our group! Thanks to the people at Revolusun, we'll be able to get the panels and battery system in place by Wednesday, meaning that we will make our deadline. We'll be receiving a new Sharp 240W solar panel and some other really neat stuff to help out Mr. Omo with his fishpond!
I'll also be going to CityMill tomorrow to price and hopefully pick up some rubber wire covers so that less energy is lost within the system. Thus far, things for our project are going great, and I'm sure our group will finish this project successfully!

Calculations

Yesterday I met with Mr. Kamalu to calculate some numbers to give to Revolusun to get materials.  My hope was that when I walked into Mr. Kamalu's classroom that he would tell me some magical formula to get all the answers and we could get our prototype up!... Unfortunately there was no magical formula.  We calculated that we would need something like a 12V battery 105 AH @ 20 Hr. rate.  It would probably take 44.3 AH for the battery to run for 19 hours (5 hours of sunlight during day).

While writing this blog post I received an email from Alan! So this is the plan:
They have a Sharp 240W module with 37.4 volts and 7.98A.  The panels produce 37.4 volts but the pump needs 12 volts to operate.  We will use a Peak Power Point tracker in order to lover the voltage down to 12 volts for the pump to function but it also raises the amps to charge the battery. Without this device you would lose 25.4 volts of solar power. This combo of the Sharp Module and Peak Power Point Tracker will produce 15A/hr for an average of 5 sunlight hours= 75A.  The current pump will not work so they will provide a 12V pump that runs for 24 hours and consumes 43.2 A.  So if the combination of the module and tracker= 75 A and the pump will take 43.2 A then there will be 32A to charge the battery.  This will provide enough energy for 2-3 days of stormy weather a month.

In order to provide supply for these 2-3 days, we will need 129.6 AH. They will provide a 225 AH @ 20 hr Deep Cucle 12V battery bank.  There is extra AH so that the battery doesn't discharge completely and ruin the battery.

Alan said they will be delivering everything on Monday in the afternoon!! So exciting!!! Thats the plan so hopefully it will work out!

Peak Power Point Tracker
planetarypower.com.au

Nearing the End...

Today we are hoping for good results when we send the people at Revolusun our email with the numbers. Kyrie already emailed them previously and got confirmation that they would in fact be giving us a donation of some sort. We realize that we are nearing the end and the culmination of all of our planning and communicating and organizing our project. If Revolusun is able to come and install the prototype before our deadline in 6 days that would be awesome. So basically all we're waiting for is to get the numbers from Mr. Kamalu later today and then emailing it to Revolusun and they will contact us back in what they can give us and give us a timetable for what they can do and when. Once that is settled and agreed upon, the final construction is now in their hands with how much time their going to take to finish and install it since we can't. So todays a kind of another big day for us and we all hope that it will turn out good. Above is a picture of our group (missing Tiare) and hopefully we'll be able to take another one of these pictures in 6 days if our project is up and running!

Time..

http://www.solarpanels365.com/uploaded_images/small-solar-panels-779013.jpg
We didn't have class today, but we did continue working. Today Nicole went in to speak to Mr. Kamalu about his ideas on our project and to ask for his assistance in finding equations that we could possibly use to determine the voltage of battery and power needed to be supplied by our solar panel. This information is crucial because it is necessary to determine the solar panel we will need and to get this information to Mr. Blake, who will then deliver it to Alan from Revolusun. The longer this process takes, the longer it will take for us to get our necessary items to complete our project and run our prototype, which is due in seven days. Our biggest problem at the moment is the amount of time this process takes and the amount of time that it will take for Revolusun to check their inventory to see if they have what we need and if not for us to find a company that could provide an appropriately powered solar panel.

Back to work

Today is our first day back at school after our Easter Break and no time is being wasted. Physics class today was dedicated to adding necessary changes to our detailed design and adding some fancy pictures. We also started discussing buying rubber wire tracks to shield the wires of the solars panels from the sun. Other than that, we started dividing our responsibilities for our final presentation and working on our peer evaluations, which are due on Thursday.
Our main concern now is getting all of the needed equations and numbers for our solar panels and the battery. Nicole and I are planning on hopefully meeting with Mr. Kamalu sometime today during late 4th period and homeroom/lunch so that he can guide us through our equations. Ideally, we'll have the numbers computed and sent to the people at Revolusun by Thursday.

pictures!

Here are some pictures from our adventure down to middle school

the aquaponics grow bed and fish pond

the current solar panels that Mr. Omo has

the current battery system that Mr. Omo has set up

the pump from the bell system and the fish we'll be helping out :)

our group along (missing Tiare), with Mr. Omo and Allan from Revolusun

Understanding the Science

On Thursday, after the visit with Allen, a representative from Revolusun, our group has decided to try solar panels, instead of the water wheel solution.  After looking at our water wheel design, with our time, money and knowledge restrictions, our group has taken the step toward solar.  Before our meeting with Allen, Kyrie and I went to ask Mr. Kamalu (Physics Teacher) if he could help us figure out what was wrong with Mr. Omo’s present solar situation.  Currently Mr. Omo has a 56-watt pump, two 5 watt solar panels, a 12 volt battery and a 400 watt power inverter.  Here’s how it works:  The solar panels are arranged in a series, so together they can get up to 10 watts of power on a good day.  Now this is a very good day, without clouds, or rain and a whole lot of sunshine.  In reality because every day is not a “very good day”, the solar panels are getting more like about 6 or 7 watts.  So this power goes into the inverter.  The inverter takes the power, which is DC (Direct Current) and turns it into AC (Alternating Current).  Once the power is inverted it goes to the pump and battery.  Now here’s the tricky part, lets say that we are getting a substantial amount of power.  In this case about 50% of the power is stored in the battery and the rest goes to power the pump.  The pump needs 56 watts in order to work….yeah we have about 7 watts right now and none of that would be going to the battery….so its not working. 

Fortunately we were able to meet with Allen and Mr. Kamalu, and we figured out we need a bigger batter and bigger panels.  Our job is to calculate how many watts the solar panels need in order to give 50% to the battery and still be able to run the pump.  When doing these calculations there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration.  These include: 1) 3 days a month of rain/clouds 2) 5 hours of sun per day 3) the tilt of the solar panel 4) the voltage of the battery.  My goal is to get these calculations done by Tuesday!

A Huge Step Forward

http://news.cnet.com/i/bto/20090309/google_docs_logo.png

Today/last night was a major success for my group members and me. It’s very hard to sum it all up in tonight’s blog post but I’ll try and explain it all. It all started from last night when I got a call from Tiare at around 8:30 at night saying how the Revolusun people (a local solar company) replied and want to meet us on campus THE NEXT DAY. We were all happy and it was kind of weird how they replied so quickly. It really seemed like they wanted to make a donation too. The next part was the hardest part when we were trying to get a hold of everybody to get cleared from periods 4 and 5. I had to ask 346721 people before I could get Nicole’s number so I could let her know what's going on. But what we really found useful was the chat on Google Docs. It basically saved the day because we could all chat and communicate with each other and as well as Mr. Blake on what’s happening and what we were going to do the next day such as getting cleared from our classes and who to email and communicate with before this Revolusun guy came and visited. Once we got everything organized and set up for today, we were set and happy. When we all met after period 3 to meet the Revolusun guy, we were all excited and anxious to see how he could help us. When we met him, his name was Alan and he sounded just as excited and anxious to help us as well which was a very good thing. Any type of donation from them would be awesome. We explained to Alan that we needed some sort of solar panel that could power a pump that needs up to 56 watts to work and also we would need a 24 volt batter to power that motor for up to 3 days so it can still pump water during no sun days or cloudy/rainy days. We also talked to Alan about how else we could improve this project. Some of the things he was saying were to raise the power lines from and to the solar panels so there not on the ground because the cooler things are the more efficient they are. Also he mentioned the tilt of the solar panel and which way it should face. It should usually be at a 20-degree tilt towards the south or wherever the sun is facing so it can catch as much sun as possible. There are lots of things that Alan, Mr. Omo and Mr. Blake talked about but I wont be able to fit it all on here. There was so much information that was gathered today it seemed ridiculous because we never thought we would get this far as a group so early. Basically all we have to do now is wait till Tuesday when we can talk to Mr. Kamalu about all of the numbers involving this solar panel so we can get it to Alan and Mr. Blake asap to figure out how the people at Revlolusun can help us! (Because they really seem to want to) I know this blog post was a lot of information and kind of all over the place but I hope you understood what happened today. If I missed any points I’m sure Nicole will cover them tomorrow. I will try and get the interview video up here and as well as pictures of today once they’re uploaded.

Communication...

http://www.revolusun.com/public/img/revolusun_logo.png
Today we ran into many difficulties including getting in touch with Mr. Omo, who is the teacher that we are trying to assist, and finding an appropriate and reasonably priced solar panel. This lack of communication is extremely detrimental to the creation of our project because in order to help him to power his pump we need to know how he is currently using his solar panel, whether directly or using a battery to store its power, and what voltage he believes would be strong enough. We also need to know if we will be able to hook the solar panel up to the pump and if it will be compatible. We also emailed Revolusun to see if they would be willing to donate a low voltage solar panel for our project and are waiting on a reply. Our next step will be to talk to Mr. Kamalu and see if he could possibly assist us in finding a vendor for solar panels and ask for his advice on an appropriate sized panel for our project.

*Facepalm*

This is, without a doubt, one of the most challenging things that our group has had to face throughout high school. Going into this project, we didn't think that taking on Mr. Omo's water transferal problem was going to be all that difficult, but boy were we wrong. 
Our first ideas of creating a water wheel in order to move the water from the fishpond against gravity seemed like a great idea. We figured that we'd just be able to buy a water wheel and set it up at the fishpond, end of story. Problem is, water wheels are pretty expensive. So why not build a water wheel, you ask? Let's just say that none of us are expert water wheel builders, and we realistically won't be able to build a two-foot diameter water wheel in two weeks. 
So it looks like we're going to have to resort to our Plan B: solar panels. Currently, Mr. Omo has a series of two, 5-volt solar panels set up to run the bell system and pumps of the fish pond. The problem with Mr. Omo's solar panels is that they are only able to store enough energy to run for 24 hours. This means that our groups' new objective is to find new solar panels at a slightly higher voltage as well as a battery system that we could use to store the energy from the solar panels. 

image: http://mauinow.com/files/2011/01/revolusun-maui.jpg

Interview w/ Mr. Omo

Today I went down to the middle school and had a personal interview with Mr. Omo.  I was able to finally see the current design physically.  This design consists of water being pumped from the pond into two beds of kalo, about 2 feet above the pond.  In each bed is a bell system, which acts a suction to drain the water from the bed to be recycled back into the pond.  It was really cool to look at the design and to get a feel for how it operates.  Currently the pump recycles the entire pond of water 4 times a day.  The pond is 75 gallons.  Mr. Omo does have two solar panels but they are only powerful enough to power the pump for 24 hours.  The pond is totally sustainable except for the pump.  The fish eat the worms from Mr. Omo's compost project, the waste water is pumped into the kalo beds which filter out the nutrients and use it as fertilizer.  The filtered water then travels back into the pond.

Our design would still utilize the bell system but a water wheel would transfer water up 2 feet, which would then be diverted into the beds.  The water wheel could be extremely time consuming to complete. I personally think that this design actually has a chance of working....that is if we can make a water wheel.

"Fall Down 7 Times, Stand Up 8"

http://thewealthcurve.com/blog/files/2010/03/Failure-Success.jpg

This quote above is a quote used to fight adversity and failure. This isn't saying that we're facing this many failures so early in the process of making out water wheel, but we're just thinking of the possible outcomes and possibilities. We accepted that this project will be a very tough one for us, especially we're defying the laws of physics. But I believe we can do it. This is going to take lots of preparation and testing and tweaking though. Hopefully over the course of the week we can come up with our final plan so we can start testing and get out there in the field. I feel that the more we test and the more we rebuild and tweak the better and more successful our project will be. This week should be an interesting one to see what different kinds of problems we encounter.

Failures For Thought

The plan we presented to the class consisted of a water wheel to pick up water from the fish pond and bring it to the plants.  The water draining from the pond would go back into the fish pond and create the current to push the water wheel.....The more I think about this plan, the more I seem to find reasons for it to not work.  Iʻm not trying to a "negative nancy" but I have come up with a few speculations as to why our design will need some major tweaking.  The first problem is that if we were to in fact use the water wheel, then only the surface water of the fish pond would be taken up to the grow bed.  The whole purpose of aquaponics is to use the fish waste, which sinks to the bottom, to fertilize the plants.  The second problem is that we would probably need a motor to turn the water wheel because it would hard to created a current strong enough to turn the wheel.  Our main goal is to not use a pump or motor for this project.  The third problem is that the water wheel would create a continuos dumping of water on the leaf lettuce.  This would thusly erode the soil, expose the roots, and the plant would not grow very well.  We would not be able to control the amount of water the leaf lettuce needs, which would most likely result in the plants dying.  After all of this criticism on our project, I would like to end on a lighter note.  Even though we have many vital problems to address in our design, there are still millions of possibilities for us to try.  As Mr. Blake told us today, "Thomas Edison found 99 ways to not make a light bulb." So the task at hand is to put a little more creativity and keep experimenting with out design.  We can only learn from our failures.

"If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward" - Thomas Edison 

Sources: http://vocalminority.typepad.com
http://answers.yahoo.com

Is this the right solution?

Picture 1:http://blogs.ksbe.edu/koomo/files/2011/04/IMG_2716.jpg
Picture 2:http://blogs.ksbe.edu/koomo/files/2011/04/IMG_2717.jpg
Today we presented our project proposal to the class and did pretty well. We were able to explain how physics related to our project and adequately answer all of the questions that were asked but doing this did get us to reconsider the specifics of our project. We came across things such as not actually seeing the pond in person, getting in better contact with Mr. Omo to ensure that we are answering his problem in the way that he wishes and how and when we will be able to go down to the middle school campus and test/draft our project. Since it would be in our best interest to consider Mr. Omo’s wishes first, our next step will be to hopefully have a meeting with him so we can better understand what is expected of us and so that we can present our ideas to him and see if they coincide.