Engineering Design - Depression
In STEM for the last few weeks we were working on a project to engineer a way to help end a problem affecting our world today. In class, we brainstormed ideas of world problems affecting people today. We then narrowed the brainstorm ideas down to problems that we, as high school students, could have some control over and that we could present to the public.
For our engineering design project, me, Gigi, and Christa chose to research and work on depression. We all believed that it was a very prominent problem in the world today, and that it would be worthwhile to do this project on it. It would not be too unrealistic either, and we could manage to make something to present the problem and try to help solve it.
To solve this problem, we decided to take a more passive approach. We didn't create anything to directly help end depression, but instead created a website to educate people on it. We also included a link to a website that provided a survey that helped you to tell whether you are depressed or not. We included multiple ideas on how to know if you are depressed or not, how to help your depression, and what to do to get help if you are depressed.
The below link is a direct link to the site we created:
Steps we followed:
Before We Start - Brainstorm and decide the problem we want to help solve - My group and I decided that a good problem to try to help solve would be depression, so we chose this as our world problem.
Step One - Research the information we need about our topic - We went on many different websites to find out what depression really is, ways to treat it, and where to go to get help for it.
Step Two - Decide how to convey this information on the topic to others to help solve the problem - For this project we thought a website would be an effective way to convey the information to people everywhere.
Step Three - Add all the information we have onto the website - We created our website and all added the information we researched into defined sections within the site.
Step Four- Add link to survey website and cite our information sources - We all took the links of the websites we used in our research and put them on the website to give credit to and to let people visit these sites. We also found a website with a survey to help identify depression, which we added to our site with a description of the survey.
Step Five - Post the website and make it public - We finally posted the website and, to give it publicity, we told our friends and classmates to visit the site and take the survey.
Before We Start - Brainstorm and decide the problem we want to help solve - My group and I decided that a good problem to try to help solve would be depression, so we chose this as our world problem.
Step One - Research the information we need about our topic - We went on many different websites to find out what depression really is, ways to treat it, and where to go to get help for it.
Step Two - Decide how to convey this information on the topic to others to help solve the problem - For this project we thought a website would be an effective way to convey the information to people everywhere.
Step Three - Add all the information we have onto the website - We created our website and all added the information we researched into defined sections within the site.
Step Four- Add link to survey website and cite our information sources - We all took the links of the websites we used in our research and put them on the website to give credit to and to let people visit these sites. We also found a website with a survey to help identify depression, which we added to our site with a description of the survey.
Step Five - Post the website and make it public - We finally posted the website and, to give it publicity, we told our friends and classmates to visit the site and take the survey.
Reflection:
During this project, I had a lot of upsides, but there were some times when there were downsides as well. Some of the things I did right during this project was that I put in a lot of work and did my fair share of the website's content. I also helped Christa finish her section while she was sick, and presented her part of the website to the class. Through some of this project though, I felt a bit distracted and sometimes had trouble doing my work. Overall, I think this project was a great experience and though I was distracted at times, I feel happy with the amount of work I completed during this project.
During this project, I had a lot of upsides, but there were some times when there were downsides as well. Some of the things I did right during this project was that I put in a lot of work and did my fair share of the website's content. I also helped Christa finish her section while she was sick, and presented her part of the website to the class. Through some of this project though, I felt a bit distracted and sometimes had trouble doing my work. Overall, I think this project was a great experience and though I was distracted at times, I feel happy with the amount of work I completed during this project.
Science Building Project
During this project, our task was to create a new science building for our San Marin campus. The building must use the sun as an all day light source to try to minimize the need for electric lighting. The people in my group were Lucy, Chase, and Vanessa. Before we began though, we had to research a lot of different important topics required before designing a passive solar building.
The Layers of Earth:
We learned a lot about the many layers of the Earth. We learned that it is approximately 4000 miles from the surface of the Earth to the Earth's center. We also learned that the different layers of Earth affect earthquakes, and that earthquakes are caused by movements in the tectonic plates.
Planet's Orbits:
To learn about the orbit of planets, we created a simple diagram and added on to it as we learned more and more about the solar system. It ended up being changed around 3 or 4 times until we had the sizing and placement about right. Once we are finished with that, we chose and proved a phenomena to be correct. We then created a poster about the phenomena and each group member presented a different section to the class.
Atomic Structure:
We also learned about atomic structure, or the structure of atoms, which helped us to better understood how heat and light traveled later in the lesson.
Day Lighting Design Structure:
Before we could make the final design for our building, we had to show that we knew all the ways of brightening up the room using just the sunshine. To do this, we created a daylight design structure, which was a small, cardboard, model building in which we put all of the day lighting designs that we had learned to try to brighten up the building as much as possible. The materials we used on this model were cardboard, tinfoil, PVC pipe, hot glue, tape, and white paper. The tin foil and white paper were used to reflect the light around the room. Overall, our Day Lighting Design Structure was mostly a success.
Justification Document:
In class, each group got a different section of the justification document to fill out so that each group could have a full class's information. It ended up turning out like this after everybody's information was added onto it:
We learned a lot about the many layers of the Earth. We learned that it is approximately 4000 miles from the surface of the Earth to the Earth's center. We also learned that the different layers of Earth affect earthquakes, and that earthquakes are caused by movements in the tectonic plates.
Planet's Orbits:
To learn about the orbit of planets, we created a simple diagram and added on to it as we learned more and more about the solar system. It ended up being changed around 3 or 4 times until we had the sizing and placement about right. Once we are finished with that, we chose and proved a phenomena to be correct. We then created a poster about the phenomena and each group member presented a different section to the class.
Atomic Structure:
We also learned about atomic structure, or the structure of atoms, which helped us to better understood how heat and light traveled later in the lesson.
Day Lighting Design Structure:
Before we could make the final design for our building, we had to show that we knew all the ways of brightening up the room using just the sunshine. To do this, we created a daylight design structure, which was a small, cardboard, model building in which we put all of the day lighting designs that we had learned to try to brighten up the building as much as possible. The materials we used on this model were cardboard, tinfoil, PVC pipe, hot glue, tape, and white paper. The tin foil and white paper were used to reflect the light around the room. Overall, our Day Lighting Design Structure was mostly a success.
Justification Document:
In class, each group got a different section of the justification document to fill out so that each group could have a full class's information. It ended up turning out like this after everybody's information was added onto it:
San Marin Science Building:
Finally, we began to work on designing our science building using all the concepts we had learned. We decided to make a do-decagon shaped building with a round center room. This room in the center would have a glass, dome roof to let light in and would be used as a work space for students. There would be 10 classrooms circling the outside of the center room, a teacher prep room, and bathrooms. The building will also have four windows, a clerestory window, and white ceilings in every classroom to maximize the amount of sunlight getting into the rooms. The slide show we created is shown below:
Finally, we began to work on designing our science building using all the concepts we had learned. We decided to make a do-decagon shaped building with a round center room. This room in the center would have a glass, dome roof to let light in and would be used as a work space for students. There would be 10 classrooms circling the outside of the center room, a teacher prep room, and bathrooms. The building will also have four windows, a clerestory window, and white ceilings in every classroom to maximize the amount of sunlight getting into the rooms. The slide show we created is shown below:
Reflection:
During this projects, there were some upsides to me being in this group, and a few downsides. Some of the upsides for this project were that I had some pretty good, innovative ideas and I tried to stay on task as often as I could. The downside was that, though I tried, I would occasionally get distracted and let my mind wander away from the project, before my team helped me with getting it back on track and continuing work. I was also sick for the presentation day, but as this is unavoidable, my team helped me by presenting my section while I was gone. Overall, I liked my group for this project, thought I did my part on it, and liked the final result of what my group and I created.
During this projects, there were some upsides to me being in this group, and a few downsides. Some of the upsides for this project were that I had some pretty good, innovative ideas and I tried to stay on task as often as I could. The downside was that, though I tried, I would occasionally get distracted and let my mind wander away from the project, before my team helped me with getting it back on track and continuing work. I was also sick for the presentation day, but as this is unavoidable, my team helped me by presenting my section while I was gone. Overall, I liked my group for this project, thought I did my part on it, and liked the final result of what my group and I created.
Robot Art Show
For the Robot Art Show Project, we had to create a sort of "Show" using the Arduino coding system, Arduino board, a bread board, and some supplies like lights, wires, and buzzers. We learned how to code the Arduino boards using Arduino's language of code and coding software and decided on what we were going to do for our show. My group decided that we would use a buzzer to play the song Africa, by Toto. Below is all the steps we used to code this song:
- We learned how to put together the circuit board and bread board so that the buzzer would work once we coded it
- We learned how to code different notes and their frequencies
- We searched the song notes for Africa and wrote them all down
- We searched the different letter notes of the songs and found their frequencies
- We, finally, determined the tempo and number of beats per letter that would work best with the song
We decided once we were finished with creating the song that we still had plenty of time to add more. We thought that with this time it would be cool to have an LCD screen introduce the song. The steps below are how we did this:
- We learned how to set up the circuit board and breadboard so that it could run the screen and buzzer at the same time
- We coded the screen to say Introducing Africa by Toto
- We noticed that the screen didn't show the message until after the song was finished
- We edited the code by putting the screen's coding before the buzzer's, so the screen introduced the song and then the song began, instead of vice versa
Reflection:
I thought this project was extremely interesting and was most likely my favorite project of the year. I think I did my best work during this project. I was very involved in the work I was doing and was super excited to see the outcome of the project. A con on this project was that I didn't know a lot about coding before we started so it took me a long time to understand the code language, but I could understand it once I learned how to use it. Overall, I did my best work on the Robot Art Show and this was my favorite project of this year by far.
I thought this project was extremely interesting and was most likely my favorite project of the year. I think I did my best work during this project. I was very involved in the work I was doing and was super excited to see the outcome of the project. A con on this project was that I didn't know a lot about coding before we started so it took me a long time to understand the code language, but I could understand it once I learned how to use it. Overall, I did my best work on the Robot Art Show and this was my favorite project of this year by far.
Build A Band
The Build A Band project was one focused mostly on waves and their different frequencies and lengths. For this project, we had to find out the wavelengths of different notes and had to use them to create an instrument. The requirements for these instruments were that they had to be a chime, wind, or bass instrument that could play no less than 8 notes. I chose to create a pan flute as my wind instrument, and these are the steps I took to create it:
- Find the wavelengths of the full octave that I wanted to play, and I decided on C4 through C5
- Divide the wavelengths by 4 to get the measurements for the pipes
- Cut the pipes at these measurements and stick them together in order from longest to shortest
- Cover the bottoms of the pipes with something that is able to cut off the air flow, I chose cardboard for this
The way a wind instrument works is that the wind is split into two directions. One direction of air goes down into the tube and the other half moves over the top of the hole. This separation in air causes a vibration that registers as sound when it reaches the ear drum.
Reflection:
During this project I believe that I did some pretty good work. It was a lot of fun and I finished my instrument early, so I could help my group finish theirs, which took a bit longer to make. Some cons about this project were that I got distracted every so often while helping my group, and that my instrument was semi fragile, so part of it broke at one point during the project. Other than that, this project rolled over smoothly and was a lot of fun to work on.
During this project I believe that I did some pretty good work. It was a lot of fun and I finished my instrument early, so I could help my group finish theirs, which took a bit longer to make. Some cons about this project were that I got distracted every so often while helping my group, and that my instrument was semi fragile, so part of it broke at one point during the project. Other than that, this project rolled over smoothly and was a lot of fun to work on.