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.

The Proposal

http://32549780.nhd.weebly.com/waterwheels.html

Today was a special day for us because we finally decided WHAT WE'RE GOING TO DO, or at least propose. After a while of brainstorming and thinking of ideas, we finally came to the conclusion that we're going to make a water wheel of some sort to transport water from a fishpond to some plants 2 feet above it and have it recycle the water in a continuous circular like motion. The idea of NOT using electricity was proposed and we figured out a solution to make it work without. Although this may be hard, we are up for the task. We are going to have to try many different models and are going to have to run it through many tests for it to finally work out. This may seem like a long and tedious task, but we're up for the challenge. As you can see below VVV its possible to move water uphill without using electricity or a pump, and we're here to prove that.

Oh boy,

As the other member in my group previously stated, our group is choosing to focus on the task of transporting water from a tank to a garden nearly two feet above it. Anyone with a brain can piece together that this will surely be a difficult thing to achieve. Nicole did point out that moving water upstream has been done before, but let's keep in mind that we are not geniuses like the group of boys that did this, but we can at least give it a try. 
I can't help but think that this might be an easier thing than we are making it. There are, and have been, civilizations that have been situated above water sources, and they must have had ways of getting water to them. To start of though, I think it would be a great idea for our group to use similar tools and objects that the group of boys did, but we should also try to innovate their ideas and attempt to make them our own. 
Hopefully this all ends well. But like Beau said, in a worst case scenario, we would be able to purchase a simple pump for Mr. Omo and find a way to make the pump run on a tiny photovoltaic cell in order to make it even more eco-friendly. 

Image: http://www.solarnavigator.net/images/solar_cells_panels_array_monocrystaline.jpg

It's Not Impossible

So this past week we received a problem from Mr. Omo, in the middle school.  The specifications for his problem is that water needs to be moved from a fish pond to a grow bed 24 inches above the pond.  Currently he is using a pump to do this, but he is asking us to figure out a solution without using a pump.  When proposing this idea to Mr. Blake he gave us a not very reassuring, "Good Luck!".  Well I researched it online and found that a couple of high school kids from California have accomplished moving water uphill.  I'm not going to say, "In your face Mr. Blake" because the design looks a bit complicated for us regular physics students.  This design features two wheels which carry water and a bunch of hoses and buckets.  I'm hoping that we can pull something off similar to this.  I recently e-mailed Mr. Omo asking him  if he had time to organize a personal interview so that we could physically see the problem.  This is a picture of the geniuses who came up with this idea.  Hopefully we can work something out like this.

http://www.america.gov/st/educ-english/2008/June/200806111520461CJsamohT0.6157953.html 

www.america.gov

We Have An Idea

http://www.valvetests.com/pump/

After we conducted our interviews with our various teachers around campus, each of them had a central idea, being more green. Mr. Vinta suggested giving more money to the tree huggers to promote more green awareness around campus weekly or monthly instead of just once a year during the sustainability fair. Mama Fuj suggested a class to promote more green awareness and more sustainability around campus to pass the "test of life" instead of the "tests in the classroom." After we emailed Mr. Omo from middle school and he gave us a really good problem that we all liked that we could tie into physics perfectly. He asked us to create something to move water upstream without using a pump. Although this seems almost impossible to do so, we're going to take on the challenge of doing just that. We could still buy a pump but that would make our budget tight. Over the weekend we will research on possible ways to make a pump or possible ways to power a pump using solar power or something else. This will truly be a challenge but we are up for the task for this week.

Practicality

http://www.opposingviews.com/attachments/0000/0429/should_we_recycle_main.jpg?1249440865
Over the weekend we decided to better consider the interviews we had done during the week and how we could possibly use them. Do we go to school to learn how to retain information for a couple of days? Or is our goal to learn how to survive in the real world. We should be learning for practicality, learn to think outside of the box and to sustain a world for a better future. Why would you want to learn how to enter the world throughout school when you could be learning how to act in the world now. Students are more likely to remember and continue things learned now if they are doing hands on things that they believe relate to them. Our generation does not do well with lectures, we need to learn through action. We should be working to pass the test of life. By doing things like creating sustainable gardens and recycling we can reduce the amount of waste used by our school and teach the students to create a better world for themselves. We propose the creation of a class that promotes eco friendliness. This course would allow the students at our school to learn about the benefits of sustainability and to think outside of the box to create a better world for themselves. To be proactive and not just allow the world to deteriorate to act; to fix it before its gone, which at our rate could very well be in our future.

the Test of Life

Today was an enlightening experience for our group. We noticed that it was a bit difficult for us to find some sort of physics connection to the issues that our initial interviewees brought up, so we decided to go out and interview more people. So we headed out to Midkiff and had a great interview with Mama Fuj.
Tiare took on the interview and asked Mama Fuj some great questions.Today was an enlightening experience for our group. We noticed that it was a bit difficult for us to find some sort of physics connection to the issues that our initial interviewees brought up, so we decided to go out and interview more people. So we headed out to Midkiff and had a great interview with Mama Fuj.

Tiare took on the interview and asked Mama Fuj some great questions. Our interview video is being a bit stubborn at the moment, so it'll by uploaded by tomorrow afternoon. 

The points and ideas that Mama Fuj brought up really got our group thinking about the issues that our school has with being more eco-friendly, hands on, and ultimately, preparing us students for what life has in store for us. Mama Fuj really hit home when she told us about how our school prepares us for the written tests in school, but fails to prepare us for the test of life. Thanks to Mama Fuj's interview, our group got the idea of focusing our project on leading our school in a more green direction, possibly including a class that teaches us about agriculture and nature, with some standard academics sprinkled in as well.

Special mahalo to Mama Fuj in Midkiff for allowing us to interview her :)

The Interviews Begin

Yesterday the group decided on faculty and staff members to interview.  Kyrie decided on interviewing Mr. Sleigl, Beau interviewed Mr. V and Tiare interviewed Mrs. Kashiwa.  I chose to interview my dorm advisor who wanted to be remain un-named.  The interview was not very successful due to the fact that my dorm advisor really quite enjoys her job.  I began by asking her questions about problems she had in the dorm.  She explained that many of our dorms' appliances and equipment are broken or in extremely bad condition.  Other problems included not having enough privacy, bugs in the dorm, and the fact that we waste a lot of electricity.  Unfortunately I don't think privacy and bugs can be fixed through physics.  My best hope is that we can use what we learned from the electricity unit to fix the treadmills and washing machines.

http://www.treadmilltalk.com/nordictrack-treadmills-consumer-reviews-comments-submitted-by-users.html

Interview Day

http://intenseindividuals.com/2010/07/07/the-trash-can-vs-the-mini-car/
Today our group began discussing possible people to interview. We decided that since it could be potentially overwhelming and inconvenient for us to complete the interviews together, we will do them individually. Therefore we will have more interviewees and view points to consider. We plan on interviewing three teachers, Mr. Vinta, Mrs. Kashiwa, and Mr. Slagel, and one dorm adviser, Ms. Ofisa. These teachers/advisers were chosen because they have openly stated inconveniences that they wish to change within our campus. We recognize that there are many of our ideas that are either too broad or can not directly be solved with physics and therefore are currently working on digging deeper to find more specific problems.

About Our Bug List

http://www.ksbe.edu/about/facts.php

As I look at the list that me and my group members made, all of these problems were problems that we all agreed on, and I was amazed on how many problems there were around the school. Some of these problems are minor problems that can be fixed in a short time such as "irritating people," but others such as the bus fuel problem, can take years to figure out. These problems in the list below are just some of the ones that only our group came up with, there are numerous other problems that should be talked about but these that we as a group came up with were the main ones. Kamehameha Schools is the best school in the nation and possibly the world but yet it still has its flaws. We will try to identify the fixable problems and make them noticed. The student body is the best way to spot problems because teachers or faculty aren't in our seat and can't see what a normal day is like in a students perspective. Our goal is to help make Kamehameha a better place than it already is which is going to be hard, but we're out here to try. We have a wide range of problems and will condense them to hit the big ones.

Bug List

Here's the quick Bug List that our group came up with. A lot of the topics on our list are seemingly random, but there are a few things on our list that we think can really make a difference on our campus. 

-We have to wear lanyards even though they are pointless
-We don’t have solar panels to power our campus
-We don’t grow our own fruits and vegetables on campus
-We don’t take field trips
-We are not project based
-We have a lot of land on campus that is unused (past Keana Ka Mano by Main Gate)
-Strict rules
-Not like college
-Dress code
-Traffic/parking situations
-We should have more freedom, and practice time management
-Not enough real-life application to lessons
-Hailama, Mrs Martin, Traffic court lady
-unnecessary number of campus security guards (most are idle for majority of the school day)
-Claim that we need budget cuts, yet spent over a million dollars on laptops that were not completely necessary
-Repaving roads that keep getting repaved
-Internet restrictions
-No Student Support Center up at Konia
-Make Bus Terminal nicer
-School spending money on pointless things instead of things we need
-We should create our own energy to power our hallway lights at night, our classroom lights, our ac.
-We should go out into the community to learn and do projects
-Student rights
-More school improvement meetings
-Relaxed dress code for prom
-Relaxed dress code for free dress with stricter rules for inappropriate attire
-More emphasis on certain school groups (performing arts groups)
-Water efficient toilets, bathrooms
-Paper-less hand driers in the bathrooms
-Bio-diesel buses, using veggie oil from `Akahi-`Akahi waste
-More food selections at lunch
-Serve breakfast to non-borders (to go? bagels and smoothies :)
-Cleaner bathrooms
-Lunch (sandwich bar) on Konia Field
-More emphasis on recycling bins for bottles/cans
-SENIOR PRIVELAGES (senior lounge)
-No sitting in the hallways in mornings/afternoons (ahem, JUNIORS)
-More seating around Konia field for students to hang out in mornings/afternoons
-Irritating people
-Online courses throughout the year

-Using the heater in the pool rather than letting swimmers freeze to death

Nicole and I took a real liking to the topic of making the busses that we use at school bio-diesel. It makes a lot of sense to us to make this change to our busses because they're running all day long, and not only would it save a lot of money for the school, but it'd be healthier for the environment and we could use the leftover vegetable oil from Akahi to run the busses.