At the beginning of this unit, we started off by listing every world problem from traffic to terrorists. We then individually picked a problem we wanted to solve. After that we found other people with our world problem and we had to solve that problem. My group to do this was Rachel, Toni, and Casey and our problem was ocean pollution. We spent several weeks researching ocean pollution (specifically plastic pollution) and making our slideshow presentation. Once we had enough information about ocean pollution, we created a prototype of something that could help solve ocean pollution.
We had a couple of ideas to stop ocean pollution. One of these was to design a "Trash Boat" to go around the Pacific Ocean and clean up all the trash vortexes. Trash vortexes are giant swirling whirlpools of trash. Our final plan was to create a storm drain filter and biodegradable plastic. The first time we tried the biodegradable plastic, it turned out hard to shape and it had a very bad, strong smell to it. The second time we tried it, we were able to make a plastic bag and some hard plastic. After we let the product sit for a couple weeks, it got stronger and more difficult to break. The smell also went away. Since biodegradable plastic is already there, we decided to make the storm drain, so we had one of our original ideas. The storm drain filter was much harder to build. Our plan was to have a window screen at an angle under the streets so trash would fall into a trash can and water could flow through the sewers into the ocean. Building our filter was much harder than creating the biodegradable plastic because we had to experiment with what angle the screen had to be at to have plastic roll down it.
Concepts we used in our Creative Engineering Design
Gravity - The force that attracts an object towards the center to the earth. It is calculated by dividing velocity by time. Gravity on Earth is 9.8 meters per second squared.
Engineering Design Cycle - 1. Identify the need 2. Research the problem 3. Develop possible solutions 4. Select promising solutions 5. Construct a prototype 6. Test and evaluate prototype 7. Communicate what you discover 8. Redesign
This was one of my favorite projects so far, because we got a lot of freedom of how we wanted to solve our problem. We still had our pits and peaks. My first pit was our background knowledge of our problem. We chose this problem because it seemed interesting and not because we knew how big it was. We each learned a lot of new problems with the ocean, and not only plastic pollution. There are also many chemicals and oil spills polluting the ocean. Starting off with not much knowledge, it was harder for us than some of the other groups, but I think this pit turned into a peak because we learned more about ocean pollution. My first peak was how well our group communicated. We each had a couple different ideas, but we were able to talk it out and decide on only two solutions. We were able to share our unique blueprints for our storm drain to make the best way to filter the plastic. Our storm drain worked well and no trash was swept away into the sewers. The video of our storm drain is posted above. My second pit was sometimes our ideas didn't work. To attach the window screen to the storm drain, we first tried wood glue. The weight of the water, plastic, and leaves was too much and the screen always fell off. We also tried super glue, but that also wasn't strong enough. We had one more idea and it was to let the excess screen through the outside and screw the screen into the storm drain. This idea worked, even though that would not be how it would be with the full size storm drain. My second peak was our time management skills and collaboration. While Rachel and I worked on the presentation and script, Casey and Toni worked on our storm drain. We were able to work more efficiently than my last projects. This was the first project where I was ahead of the schedule. We sometimes changed the roles, so Rachel and I would know about how the storm drain functioned, and Casey and Toni would know what to expect from the presentation.