March 8th- GRNG 101's- Algae, Materials, Aquaponics

Algae Group:

The algae were diluted into additional bottles, and seem to be doing well:

Aquaponics:

Meanwhile, the aquaponics group made a lot of progress  building a reserve tank system with siphon:

Materials:

The Materials group has now begun a side project, making furniture from rolled newspaper:

I mentioned to them the Paper House in Rockport:
http://paperhouserockport.com/inside.html

Bikes:

The Bikes group soldered some longer leadwires onto the generator.
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Dr. T discussed re-arranging some of the groups for Quarter Four, and introduced the inquiry-based Independent Research Project.

March 7th- Xplorer's- Prototyping Indoor Composter

Last team of students pitched their design prototype:

Students were asked to give both a positive comment and a suggestion.

They then began prototyping their designs, using donated 5-gallon pails:

A lot of learning about shop tools took place!

Using the Dremel tool to cut the buckets:

March 3rd GRNG 101- Algae

Newest crop of algae seems to be growing well:

Tharun suggested that algae populations may be crashing due to J-type population curves- exponential growth followed by a crash.  

Should be transplanted and diluted every 3-4 days.

Discussed with Dr. T and Tharun- Tharun suggested that the population may be peaking and crashing; should be diluted on a regular basis:

Near Peak of Curve:

 After Crash:

March 1st -101's

Restarted Algae culture

Working on bikes..

March 1st- 301's/Xplorers

Tharun sold off his first batch of soap, and began whipping up a new batch:

Meanwhile the Xplorers began prototyping indoor composters:

and playing with slime( Elmer's glue and borax):

Feb 28th- 101's- Algae problems, etc.

ALGAE TEAM:

Over break the algae population collapsed:

The team has emptied out the containers and is starting over.

Aquaponics:

They discussed borrowing some fish from the 201's large system:

The bean plants are doing nicely:

Plants team:

The plants that were exposed to indirect sunlight over break did OK.

 The ones in the dark did not:

Feb 17th- 201's- Aquaponics, thermo-electric battery

Spencer made a lot of progress with the fish feeding mechanism:

While the fish tank was moved:

and some experiments were done with a thermo-electric cell, which was able to power an LED: