HI! Im so happy that this is the end of the year and that we got our final done before finals week:) My over all thoughts for this project are that this was benificial to everyone. We not only tried to solve a problem here at Kamehameha but we learned how to do in depth research, communicate with adults who we need help from, present it, blog about it daily, how to be resourceful, sustainable, and about team work. I though it was a great experience for everyone even if some of the projects were a fail. Some things that didn't go well was the our of class room work. The bin took longer than we though it would to make and the wood shop was so far away so its not like we could easily walk back and forth from class to shop when we needed. Another problem was not always having all of team members here or working on our project with us and that it take a while for things to compost. Things that went well was we hit all of our deadlines, thanks to Darcy:P And we got our project out in the wild and its working:) Another thing that went well was our project was helpful to not only us but to Mr. Hutchison as well. I learned a lot of thing. I re-learned how hard group work can be and also the benefits of working in a group. I learned a lot about composting with worms and the different things that need to be done in order to house worms and keep them alive. I think i would change the presentation times and maybe the date to a school day because boarders have things to do on the weekend and its not always convenient to spend like 5 hours one night on this project. I think we were doing science even if we failed because science is about trying and failing and seeing what works and what you can do next time to improve. This is definatley science because didn't you say everything we do is science? here is a picture of our poster board and of us stressing the eff out.

http://www.youality.com/what-you-need-to-have-a-successful-startup/

Over the past quarter in this class, my group and I have learned and experienced many things. I know that I haven't done as many blogs as the rest of the group. But I believe that the few posts that I did, were very well done. Through this project, our group has helped out Kamehameha Schools. The entire physic class, as well as Mr. Blake's other class, has helped out Kamehameha out in many different ways. Our group specifically helped out through the idea of being sustainable. By doing a worm composting bin, our group showed Kamehameha Schools that you can reduce and reuse what we didn't need at the time. I think that over the past week leading up to the final presentation, was the most stressful. We had to finish the power point, we had to finish the poster boards, we had to rehears, we had to do the final paper, and we had to do a final blog post. In the coming weeks, we had many trials and tribulations. The final week of the project we came together as a group and worked really hard to get everything done. I think that this project should be done again in the future. I believe that all the groups, especially our group has learned to love this project. This is a great project to do and you'll learn a lot from it. All in all, I think that this was a success.

My last contribution to this lovely blog

    

SOURCE: http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/archives/2008/Jan/

        Hello everyone :). I am here to give my last goodbyes to a project as unique as the teacher. I thought this project was completely different from any high school experience I have ever had, but hopefully future students of Kamehameha won't think that as time goes on. It was unlike anything I've even come across in school, where the students actual make the change and not just complain about it. Although, there was some bumps in the road for every group, I think this project was necessary and educational. Although admin might say that it 's not teaching us concepts of physics, the students are getting hand on experience with the real world and how change is perceived by many different people. Overall, it was a great project that taught us the bigger picture of physics instead of the small ones that we would've forgotten two weeks out of school :),
        Some of the things that went well were implementation, design, proposal, and brainstorming. These four elements of our projects went relatively fast and smooth without much conflict. However, the things that didn't go as planned is the construction time, construction manner, blog posts, and results. The construction aspects just took longer than expected and we had a few needed nuts and bolts for construction. However, since the amount of dirt and worms we had were minimal we were able to rotate with only one clasp. The blog posts were kind of infrequent and the results turned out smaller than at first predicted in our proposal.
       I learned a good deal about worms and their role in composting as well as composting as a whole. I also learned large amount about hydroponics and sustainability from Mr. Hutchison. I learned about cooperation, teamwork, troubleshooting, and leadership from my fellow group members and Mr. Blake. So, overall, it was a very educational experience filled with hard work, discipline, and "getting down to work".
       This project is pretty awesome, but if I could change anything I would ask for the A.C. to be turned down in the auditorium because I was literally shaking and freezing my butt off, even when we were speaking.  I also think that blog posts should be every other day with the schedule so that we only write on days we have class because most of the time we didn't do anything on the odd days anyway. However, other than that it was a complete success in my eyes.

        I certainly felt like we were doing science this past quarter. The whole theme of worms, decomposition, producers, and nutrient production (food break-down) brought me back to biology and the construction was all physics baby. Our project consisted of much research and experimentation, which was science in general. So, I think that, we have undoubtedly been doing science. Whether it was strictly physics or not, we need to learn application and the molding of all the science together like such in the real world. Physics is all about application into realistic situations, which is what this whole project was about and therefore everything is science related :).

http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/archives/2008/Jan/

Final Blog Post

This project was unique in every way imaginable. I have never had a project where we had to solve a problem on such a large scale by applying what we learned throughout the year in class. Typically we would never get the chance to apply what we learned in the classroom in the real world. There was a lot that each of us gained from this project because we were able to learn how to work in real world environments. It gave us all the chance to learn, grow, and become sustainable problem solvers that will gear us for the future. As a private institution that has pledged to produce good and industrious men and women I feel that opportunities such as this should be offered to students who are ready to take initiative. Hopefully these students who take initiative will maybe be able to solve some of the issues that our Hawaiian people face in the current era. At the start of this project I thought we would never get our composting bin to fully function. However through hard work and planning we somehow managed to construct this bin and get it fully functioning with worms. Creating compost took much longer than I had originally anticipated but as the saying goes "good things don't come easy." One problem that became a nightmare for us was our lack of bolts to fasten our latches and hinges to the barrel. In the end we got them fastened securely and our composting bin is ready for operation. I feel that our composting bin will go a long way in helping Mr. Hutchison in the future with his club or might be class. Every step of the way we were able to make Kamehameha a more sustainable institution. In the future I hope this project continues because there is always a problem to be solved and no matter how hard it is to get approval from administration it is always worth a try. If this project cannot be continued in Mr. Blakes physics class I feel that this project should be implemented in a separate class that could maybe join forces with Mr. Hutchison and be called "The Sustainability Class." Together it could create the good and industrious men and women Pauahi desired as well as spark the creation for leaders of the future.

ONWARD HO!

A picture of the future home of our worm bin :).
We know that our compost will be put to good use
here and contribute to the education of the future
students of Kamehameha.

I think that our symposium went really well! We had our exhibit board set up in the lobby with some adorable worms and pictures. Our final powerpoint was ready by the time we got there filled with useful pictures and we were ready to present just in time for the symposium to start. It was kind of a stressful afternoon especially with the social, which was really good by the way, but we were able to pull it off. We were fourth in line to present and we kind of antsy and worried about our presentation, but it turned out pretty swell. Our powerpoint was beautifully finished and even though we had a few miscommunications here and there throughout the presentation we all felt it went quite swimmingly for our group. We are going to be donating our bin to Leilani's D.A. sometime this week and hopefully all will go well in the composting. We would just like to give some major shout outs to some important people that made this project and blog all happen: Mr. BLAKE, Mr. HUTCHISON, Ms. FUJIMOTO, Mr. OMO, & All of my group members for all of their contributions to this project. Lastly, good job to all those groups out there for their fantastic job at the symposium on Friday!

Fingers Crossed

We are hoping that tomorrow goes swell. We have yet to rehearse the powerpoint and we still need some pictures for the presentation, which Leilani is going to supply. We are finishing up our presentation and adding some requirements that we missed. Our bin is still functioning behind Leilani's dorm. We are going to input the data tomorrow and practice and assign slides for each member of our group. We also have to finish up our written report over the weekend. Leilani is going to try to finish up the exhibit board for our symposium tomorrow where we will be rocking the aloha wear. Composting is going smoothly and we're just hoping our presentation does as well!

Oh My Goodness It's Wednesday!

One of our hard workers :)

We're down to two more days until the big presentation. We are finishing up the presentation tonight and tomorrow and then we are going to rehearse on friday. We planned to wear aloha attire and hopefully our exhibit board will be ready for friday night. We have some results and conclusions to add to our visual presentation, but other than that we are pretty much done. I might change our Google presentation to a keynote however, because Google is giving us issues with adding pictures to the presentation. So, we are probably going to end up switching the presentation because it's too much of hassle and we need our pictures in the slides. On another note we finished our written report draft. We basically used our detailed design as a base for our report. We just added some paragraphs in construction, implementation, reflections, and conclusions. We also expanded and edited the rest of our paper to make sure it makes sense with what we are adding to the paper. Our paper is pretty good, but we need to expand a little more and add pictures to the report as a whole. We are well on our way to finishing this project up. However, we have a lot of practice to do before we are ready for the presentation on Friday. Hopefully everything will run smoothly till then...

Countdown... 4 days

Our composting in action!

Our project is kind of in a panic zone. We have some food composting, but we're hoping we get results for our project. We started a little later than expected, but hopefully we can see some signs of composting. Composting itself is a pretty simple process as long as we have all the right ingredients. Right now we have only been putting food waste and some fiber as shredded paper for the worms to see if they can still compost efficiently. We did read that they can have green waste like grass clippings, weeds, and wood chips, but our project is aimed at food waste so we were hoping the composting would still workout with food waste as the main source for composting. We had our visual presentation checked and we are in the green! We just need to add our final results and conclusions with some cool pics that we took and we're good. Tomorrow we are going to be working on our written report for friday and then work on specifics for the symposium as well. As far as I know, Leilani went down to the SPC today in order to recover our display board for the symposium. We are planning to have pictures and some key facts and findings that we have for our extra credit exhibit. As time is slipping away, we are working hard towards a finished product.

Finishing Up...

Today we are putting the final touches on our presentation. As we move further along into this project our presentation day is approaching much faster than any of us could imagine. We are 4th in the presentation order on Friday and hopefully we will be ready. Right now we are going over the rubric and Darcy is adding a few slides to our powerpoint. In the future we hope that our composting bin will benefit Mr. Hutchinson's hydroponics. When I return next school year I hope to be able to participate in some planting with Mr. Hutchinson.

The Final Push

SOURCE: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x7615714

This week is the last week we are really working on our project. Our data collection has to be finished and so does our written, oral, and visual reports. It's going to be a stressful week especially with all of our other classes winding down, but I hope that our ENTIRE group will be able to push through this week to wrap up our project. It's really getting down to the wire and pretty sure our whole group is feeling it, but we are striving to get a good grade on it! We have everything pretty on track right now, but our results will be really last minute since our project takes a while for much to happen. However, composting is a pretty straight forward concept that almost everyone knows about. So, it won't be too hard to show that it works as a composter and can be used in the future. This week we plan on getting some results and finishing up our report so we don't look like fools on stage :). Hopefully all goes well and our compost bin works smoothly. It's been one heck of a project that was truly something new and definitely healthy for a school like ours to take on and as a group we plan to finish strong.

TODAY :)

Today was terrible. We had to do a test for physics that was a total surprise to me and I'm pretty sure our whole group didn't do very great job on it, but on another note, we are making some progress on the bin.
We will be working on the paper this weekend and Leilani will be collecting data on the bins by noting any observations and food types. We hope to get some results next week so we can finish up our paper and such. Right now we are in a waiting formation for Noah to come to class and fix our problems. Our group has not had a group discussion for a while and so we haven't discussed the latest happenings as a group. Hopefully on Monday we will be able to talk as a group and get everything as situated as possible for the final stretch of this project. It's the last two weeks of school and we plan to make it a good one!

This video shows what we are basically doing and how our bin works.

SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9worzmeC0E

Thursday Post

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to post last night because I was sick as a dog, but I am posting now :). I wasn't in class yesterday because I had a day full of lovely Marcoeconomics, but I did hear we have a bit of technical difficulties with the barrel, but we won't get too into that. I did hear that Leilani is working with the issues and starting to collect data with our worms. We got to talk with Mr. Hutchison as well and he taught us a lot about what hydroponics is all about. Since we are planning on giving him our bin for his project, we thought it was a great idea to learn a little bit about it. We found out that by using this technique of growing plants he was able to make plants grow with just water (tap, rain, etc), a tiny bit of soil in a small tube, and some growing solution (which can be hand crafted at our school). We all agreed it would be great if we could create a full cycle of sustainability with our composting bin for his project because right now his purchasing the soil. By using our composter he would be able to save money and make this school just a little bit greener.  Right now we are slowly getting results and we hope to have some great findings by next friday. We are progressing with our oral presentation and written report and we hope to come back with more good news this afternoon :).

This is what Mr. Hutchison is constructing and testing for a possible class or big project next year.  It runs mostly on water and creates phenomenal results in plant growth if done right. 

Wednesday Post

Idk if its just me but when I try to post somthing the blog post just has this error thing. Idk if you posted anything yet but here is somthing for tonight w/ picture.

Another thing I learned from Mr. Omo is that there are two different types of earthworms.  Blue ones and red ones.  The blue ones are the kind that we see when we dig holes in the ground because they literally live in the earth and do their own thing.  The red ones are the kind that we have in our bin.  These ones composts from down up.  Everything behind them is pretty much things they have already eaten.  These worms are used by farmers to help make the soil richer.  They will start by putting the worms in one section of the place they want to plant things and move the worms slowly down the line because for example if they put the worms on the left of the planters box then at the end of a few weeks they should be on the right side and everything behind them is rich soil.  farmers continue with this process until all of the desired soil has been turned into nutrient rich soil that is great for growing plants. Here is a picture of our red worms:)

Red Worms

Sorry about there being no post yesterday. When I tried I wasnʻt even able to access the site yesterday it just said error.
Another thing I learned from Mr. Omo is that there are two different types of earthworms. Blue ones and red ones. The blue ones are the kind that we see when we dig holes in the ground because they literally live in the earth and do their own thing. The red ones are the kind that we have in our bin. These ones composts from down up. Everything behind them is pretty much things they have already eaten. These worms are used by farmers to help make the soil richer. They will start by putting the worms in one section of the place they want to plant things and move the worms slowly down the line because for example if they put the worms on the left of the planters box then at the end of a few weeks they should be on the right side and everything behind them is rich soil. farmers continue with this process until all of the desired soil has been turned into nutrient rich soil that is great for growing plants. Here is a picture of on of our red worms:)

Food For Your Noodle

Hey guys last week Mama Fuj took me down to middle school where I met Mr. Omo and got our worms. I learned so much stuff about using worms for composting and all about the different types of micro organisms needed to get the job done. This is a blog post of one of the many cool things I learned.
This insect is totally awesome because it works hand in hand with the worms. Its called a black soldier fly also known as BSF. This fly lays its eggs in the compost and its larva act and look like maggots that help to eat the food turning it into rich soil. Seeing this fly around your composting bin is a good sign because that means that there will be baby BFS in your compost helping to decompose the waste. At first to me i was kind skeptic about these insects because they look like they could sting and I didnʻt know what they did. Now I know that they are wonderful and im glad to see BSF larva in our compost. Here is a picture of one in our compost. I named it Jane. I hope it is a girl...

Almost Done...

Photo courtesy of Micah Chow's photobooth

Caption: Noah "BoltMan" Chow is absent

So today is monday and our final project is due on wednesday. Our final prototype is very close to being completed except for the fact that our "bolt" man is absent. The last thing to do on our prototype is to replace the screws on the hinges and latch with bolts. There are also some other small adjustments in the works. Noah went down to woods last class to complete the swap but we are unsure if he actually completed it. Once our barrel is completed Noah plans to bring it back up to Konia so we can finally assemble it next to Leilani's dorm.

Actually I lied Noah is here but he went down to woods before class started. I psyched all of you out but today we are expecting to have our final prototype completed!!!

New Updates

What our worms pretty much look like :)
SOURCE: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hale_popoki/41691706/

We are well on our way to getting this project on a roll! Noah is tweaking the bin a little bit here and there with the clasps and hinges. While Leilani got our worms, dirt, and fiber that the worms need. We also found out that we need some sort of drainage, which Noah is going to install by drilling a few holes on the opposite side of the door. We are putting a tray underneath the holes as well to collect water and make sure the worms do not escape. We also got word that Mr. Hutchison would definitely be interested in taking care of our bin after the project is over. He is constructing his aqua/hydroponics system next to Konia, which is perfect because then we wouldn't have too big of a moving problem. Right now, we are thinking about housing our bin next to Leilani's dorm so that she can feed the worms and then give it to her dorm advisor for the summer. Leilani was also able to contact Mr. Omo, who works at middle school, and get a lot of different tips and information as to how to run a worm composting bin. He is also the one who supplied us with the worms. We are going to start finishing up our visual for the oral presentation and then focus on the written report soon after we get our data from the bin. We are going to use the weight of the compost as our  main variable to see the effects of the bin and how much it will improve the school if at a larger scale. Leilani informed us that the little worms can eat three times their weight, which is pretty dang amazing! So, we are hoping for great results in the coming week or so.

For Today :)

PROTOTYPE :)

Today, we haven't done much because we haven't met in class, but we are in the process of getting the okay from Mr. Hutchison for him to take care of our lovely worm bin after we leave here. I e-mailed him yesterday so hopefully he will be able to contact us soon. Tomorrow we are going to be fixing up the barrel so that the clasps and hinges will be secured on the barrel. The drill holes are too small for the screws and nuts so the holes are going to be re-drilled and the clasps and hinges will be re-attached. We also need to waterproof the base with our spray can of paint and implement the barrel. Noah and Micah will probably work on the barrel and Leilani and I will probably do the base and work on the write up. We have been working on the visual presentation for the symposium and have quite a few slides that are under construction. We are also going to make nifty wood guards for the barrel that will prevent it from rolling off the wheels. Hopefully tomorrow we will have the finished product by the time class ends and be able to implement it by next week!

For Yesterday

So, Leilani couldn't post yesterday because of the internet went out (life of a boarder) so I have the post she wrote for us right here:
Today Micah and Noah brought up our worm bin. It's pretty much awesome. Besides having the wrong sized bolts and nuts there are only a few minor detail adjustments that we need to make. Noah and Micah are figuring out a way to use the left over wood we have to keep the barrel on the wheels and on track so that it doesn't fall off the base. Tomorrow after school Mama Fuj is going to take me down to middle school to get worms and dirt from Mr. Omo. I am really excited because Mama said that he is really knowledgeable about worm composting and will have many tips/know-how/educational facts to pass on. Here is a picture of our rotating composting worm bin.

Long Term Plans

What will you do with your worm bin after this project/school year is done? How will you feed the worms? How do you feel about murdering all of these innocent worms via starvation and neglect? These are some frequently asked questions by Mr. Blake and I am proud to say that we now have a definite answer to all of them. When this project is completed our initial plan was to donate our rotating composting worm bin to Mr. Grach to use for his aquaponics garden that he plans to have next year, but we found out that Mr. Grach will not be here all summer and without being fed the worms will eventually starve to death. I have asked my dorm adviser, Mrs. Frohardt, if she would like to use/take care of our rotating worm bin during the summer and she said she would be delighted to! I have been updating Mrs. Frohardt about our project since we started so she already knew what we were doing and only needed a quick explanation about how our model works, how often to rotate it, and what kinds of food to put in it. The rotating worm bin will be kept by the garden show in the previous blog post. Because of its prime location being close to several different dorms Mrs. Frohardt suggested that the other dorm advisers put their green waste in there too. That's a great idea! As of right now our group awaits a response from Mr. Grach seeing if he would like to have our rotating composting worm bin for the next school year. I hope he says yes! This is a picture of my dorm advisers, Mrs. Frohardt is the head dorm adviser of Kapi'olani Nui and she is in the middle.

3 Days Till Blast Off

Only three days left till we release our rotating composting worm bin into the wild:) Noah was absent today so the nuts and bolt will hopefully be here tomorrow. If you are sick Noah we hope you get better. We discussed our method of how we would keep track of our projects progress. Mama Fuj said that we should weight the dirt and worms before we put it into the barrel. Then also weight it at the end of our project. Thats a really good idea and we will go with that, also i think it would be interesting to weigh how much food we put in every night.
My dorm adviser has been absent for a while because she is very sick so I haven't been able to ask her about using the worm bin over the summer to keep her garden fertilized, but this is a picture of the little garden behind our dorm and im sure it would love some wonderfully rich and nutrient filled soil to eat:)

Up and Coming

We are almost done with the construction of our worm bin. Leilani and I have discussed what we are going to do after the project is done and Micah and Noah should be done on the due date after they get some nuts and bolts for the clasps. We haven't really done anything over the weekend because we're pretty much set for project implementation. However, the next time we meet we should talk about data collection for Leilani and how we can measure and analyze after collecting. I think there will be some issues in data collecting and such because it's hard to say how much was composted and how fast, but we can see how efficient the worm bin really is. I think overall we are doing okay, but we are close to falling behind so we need to get back on track and keep our eyes on the prize. Things are going swell, but we're supposed to be done in 2 days so we're kind of pushing it. Hopefully, next post we'll be able to post a picture of our project for the blog. We're going to keep our thinking caps on and move on along.

An example of how we could keep track of data.

We Forgot Our Nuts...

Today was the second day that our group worked on constructing our rotating worm composting bin. Micah and Noah are working very hard and measuring precisely so that we dont make any mistakes. The only thing we need is nuts and bolts for the hinges on our barrel. Once we have that we should pretty much be done making it, Noah said he can get nuts and bolts for us. Did I mention that he is awesome? We are going with plan B on the placement of our worm bin, we will not put it back behind 'Akahi, instead it will be by the parking lot on the side of Konia. This is a picture of a graph of the food wasted at 'Akahi at lunch time for one week. YIKES!

Keep on Swimming

SOURCE: http://malpani.biz/?p=88

Tomorrow our peer reviews so we should be finishing up on those tonight in order to be prepared to talk to Mr. Blake tomorrow and turn in our essays. If we have enough time then Micah and Noah will go down to the shop and work on the bin. We also found out that we are probably going to have to house our bin up at Konia and Leilani will have to bring the food up in order to do the composting. However, this will be better because then we won't have to bring up the barrel from 'Akahi and plus it will be ready for any upper campus teacher who might want to take this project over in the years to come. We are learning fast about how hard it is to get things cleared. However, we do have many plan B's that we can use, but we seem to be going on a pretty smooth path. Right now, while the guys are building Leilani and I will be working on how we can compost the best. I think tomorrow is a conference day for most of the time in class so we might just have to talk about what's upcoming for our group and how we are going to go about the final weeks. Unfortunately, I was not able to get a picture of what's going on so I had to use a google picture. Sorry Mr. Blake.

Getting Down to Business

Today was our first actual construction day because we finally have enough time to start on the project without the period ending by the time Micah and Noah get down to the wood shop. They took the barrel down there as well and are working on the base first. They have the measurements and should be well on they're way. Meanwhile, Mr. Blake suggested that we keep the bin up at Konia so that we wouldn't have to transfer the bin back up to Konia from 'Akahi when it was time. There was also the fact that it might be difficult to "allow" for the housing of our bin behind 'Akahi because of certain rules and regulations. Me and Leilani finished up our peer reviews today in class and kind of went over what we were going to do after the bin was finished. The next time we meet we hope to finish up the barrel as well as have our peer reviews ready to go. We also plan to finalize where we are going to put our bin as well as how Leilani will be administering the waste and registering the data for our project. Hopefully, our project will go without a hitch and we can start preparing for the presentation by next weekend. Right now we are on schedule and we hope that this project remains that way. Unfortunately we weren't able to get a picture from Micah or Noah on how the project is developing down at the wood shop, but we promise not to put a google picture so I put a picture of some school stuff that kind of enhance our lovely educational blog.

easter weekend

This weekend we are recuperating from the craziness of fourth quarter. Micah and Noah plan to finish the base by next week and we plan to implement it around next friday. The dimensions are going to be around 24" X 15" for the base. We are working on peer reviews right now and doing research in order to get the best results for the compost bin. We are getting clearance for 'Akahi and we requested for worms and dirt from Mama Fuj. We are also seeking for other people who might want to take over this project once we leave for summer. We might give it to Mr. Hutchinson for his aquaponics, but we still have to confirm with him if not then we might talk to Mama Fuj or the Slagels if they would want to continue the composting. We have all the construction aspects pretty much figured out, so we are probably going to start preparing for the oral presentation and the written report this coming week so we don't have to stress in the last weeks of the quarter. Time is moving quickly, but we think are prepared to have everything ready for the deadlines. We are continuously working to complete this project to the best of our abilities :).
The photo to the right is a schematic of what we are making. The brown rectangle is the base, the black rectangles are the wheels, the blue rectangle is the barrel, the little blue rectangle is the door opening, the silver cylinders are the latches, the gold rectangles are the hinges and the black zig zag is a string we can use to open the door with.

Pre-Build

Image Courtesy of Micah Chow's Photobooth

Noah and I are stoked that we can actually contribute to our group now that we are entering the building phase of our project. We plan to go down to woods and use the facilities there to fabricate our prototype. Darcy has the measurements of the barrel and we are gonna start working off of that. Hopefully we get the dimensions correct because we will be pretty screwed if we cut our wood to the wrong lengths. As the old saying goes "measure twice, cut once" we plan to keep this in mind. We predicted that it would take at most around 2-3 block schedule classes to finalize and complete our product. Once we are done we hope to station it behind akahi and get it composting.

We Got The Goods

YEY! With the help of Mr. Blake and the wonderful lab assistant we were able to receive our supplies yesterday. We totally exhausted our budget for this project but we did get everything we need to build and implement our rotating composter. Noah has taken our materials down to wood shop for safe keeping where Mr. Massad has graciously given us permission to utilize the tools. Our next step is to get feed back/permission from Mr. Morris about keeping our composter behind 'Akahi and to actually build it. I want to say a special thank you to Mama Fuj again for giving us this wonderful idea and for donating a bucket of worms and dirt to us. Also thank you Darcy for donating the barrel, my dorm advisor said she will keep it safe until we get back from this awesome 4 day weekend.
This is a picture of behind 'Akahi where we can hopefully house our rotating composting bin.

ps. Sorry group for not posting this yesterday. I forgot that the internet goes out:(

Post for yesterday

SOURCE: http://eff.cls.utk.edu/fundamentals/role_map_worker.htm

Okay so, we missed a post, but here's one to replace it :). So, we received our materials yesterday and got clearance to work in the wood shop for Micah and Noah. We have everything ready and we should have the base and barrel done by next weekend and have it implemented as well. Leilani is trying to get clearance for 'Akahi by next week, but we hope we can put it there otherwise we can put it behind Konia or by Leilani's dorm. We are trying to get our worms and dirt from Mama Fuj and we got everything we needed for about $100. So, we made our budget, but we just have to work efficiently in order to make this project right the first time. I think we're doing a great job as of right now because we are getting ahead in the construction process, which is needed for data collection. We are going to be working our peer reviews as well and we are hoping to load up "in progress" pictures in our later posts to show you how we are doing.

http://www.savvyhousekeeping.com/make-a-rotating-compost-bin/

Today in class our group turned in our design, which included the materials list and timeline. Along with the materials list we added in an approximate budget. After discussing our plans with Mr. Blake, we realized that there were some some holes in our plans. We then figured out what we needed to fix, and got back on track in no time. Our group went to go and talk to the science departments lab assistant to see if the materials we needed were reasonable. She approved and will hopefully have them ready for us tomorrow in class. Our primary work station for completing the construction of this prototype will be down at the wood shop. Since Micah and I both have experience down at the wood shop, we will be able to utilize the tools and guidance of the shop teacher. By the end of the week, we will hopefully have the prototype up and running.

Construction Time !

Here's a little picture of what our prototype is going to look like. The brown bottom is a wood base, the black circles are wheels to rotate the bin, the gray rectangles are the metal latches to keep the door closed, the dark blue rectangle is the door, the yellow rectangles are the hinges, the white line is a string to open the with. 

Next on the Checklist

Our next task for this lovely project is to make a detailed design of what we are planning to do.  This 5-10 paged paper is going to go over how we will construct our composting bin and how we will implement it. We are going to finalize all equipment and materials needed for a better estimated budget and elaborate on the physics principles dealing with our project. We have not met for about five days so this design may get a little iffy, however we plan to just use our proposal to be the foundation of our detailed design and go from there. If you would like to follow along with our detailed design you can go this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FwMF-PQBY-Ffo1VWmpRJX9MAyveF66sgFiXV1A5pfNE/edit?hl=en&authkey=CI2GuGA#. We have most of our information ready to be added to the detailed design, but we just have to be more specific and elaborate more on the physics part. There are many parts to this project that make it physics related, but we just have to identify them more clearly in the write up. We hope to build our apparatus by next Tuesday in order to start the food waste collection and composting. Hopefully all of our materials will come in along with the monies so we can get this project up and running.

Here you can see a possible look at what our bin might look like :)

Weekend Schnapies

SOURCE: http://www.bazaardesigns.com/11414-building-materials/

So, we have a list of possible building materials and the average prices of these items. This list can be found at this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qcKXBLccmVRrIsKTgydh4BiospRctxkchYJA2uM1be0/edit?hl=en&pli=1#. We plan to base our schematics off of an already made composting bin and find ways to make it unique. The building apparatus that Micah had shared in the April 15th post is basically what we plan on doing in terms of creating a stable base and rotational system. However, we are still kind of planning for how we are going to make a sturdy bin that can open and close without opening during rotations. As of right now, we are planning on using a bucket or trash can cylinder and closing off the tops. Then, we can cut a rectangle opening on the side or at the ends for inserting the food waste, worms, and dirt. Luckily, Mr. Blake was able to contact a couple teachers for us to work with in order to make an efficient composting bin that will serve the school best. So, hopefully our project will be able to satisfy Mr. Blake's and the school's needs. Our budget is still fluctuating depending on the size of our bin and the details have still yet to be finalized. We realized that we need to get this implemented as soon as possible in order to get results from the composting and the worms. So, we plan to have it created some time next week and placed behind of 'Akahi to start collecting and analyzing data. We are definitely on our way to getting this project done and we hope it works :).

Finalizing

Image from: http://www.bestprice2shopping.com/tumbleweed-200003-58-gallon-rotating-compost-bin

Today is April 14, 2011 and the seniors are on their picnic at the beach. Being that I am the only junior in our group this means that I am here alone. There are still some factors to our composting bin that we have not finalized such as our building cost. This composting bin is relatively simple to build but we don't have any blueprints or finalized plans for building it. Once we figure this out or should I say once I figure it out since im the only one here then we can total up our final building cost. As of right now I plan to use a couple of 2 x 4's, a pipe, bucket, and some nails. I am thinking of placing the bin upon a pipe (so that it can rotate) which rests upon a base that will be built out of the 2 x 4 wood.

Moving Forward

SOURCE: http://www.mtlion.com/gardencomposter/technology.html

So, we are totally getting into this worm bin project and thinking it through. Such as, how we are going to measure the compost and what kinds of food we can put into the bins that the worms will digest. We made some changes to our proposal to make it more specific and informative onto how it will help Kamehameha and why it's such a good project. Right now, we are going to start on our budget for this project and what exactly we are making this composting bin out of and how we are going to make it. Since, this has been created before there are tons of different designs and modifications that we can choose from. However, we still kind of want to do this on our own and make this project original to our group for the school. We are thinking of ways to make our composting tub unique and efficient. Right now we are thinking about the budget being around 50 bucks for all the small and large parts such as PVC pipes, wheels, and nuts and bolts. We have a basic idea about what our bin will look like in the end and how it will rotate, but still have to draw specifics. We are going to try and get prices on various items that we can make our composting drum out of and use the most efficient items  with the best value of money. We are only making one drum so we shouldn't need too much, but we probably will need to order extras in case we mess up. Since, our project takes a while to get results because we need to wait for food items to decompose, then we cannot be waiting on orders or extra pipes or wheels that are vital to our project. We hope all goes well in ordering enough items in order to build our composting drum and get good results for the furthering of this idea at Kamehameha Schools.

LINK TO PROPOSAL: https://docs.google.com/document/d/17Nd-mMCkFXEQJIItWTHnUp1ANLI2OKm77j6fx5vkcaE/edit?hl=en&authkey=CJGgqV0

http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/chicago-garden/2009/07/post.html

Today our group finally came to a conclusion on what we are going to do for a project. As a whole, we decided to do the worm composting project. After seeing that our other idea for a project couldn't work, we made the right choice to switch to a more logical choice. Using the water dripping from air conditioners, our group were going to use that to water plants. There were no air conditioners in an optimal spot, so we changed to the worm idea. Although we have not yet figured out how this project connects to physics, we believe that it can help change Kamehameha for the better.

Decisions

AC PIC SOURCE: http://coolingtower-design.com/2010/11/13/air-conditioner/

GRASS PIC SOURCE: http://wallpaperstock.net/vista-grass-2-wallpapers_w2289.html

So, I think we are deciding on doing the A.C. water rerouting system idea. With this idea we will position pipes, probably PVC, below some of the air conditioning units  and connect all of the pipes to one pipe that will drain all of the water into the grass or some Native Hawaiian plants that we can install. We can drill holes in the end of the pipe system in order give the grass a sprinkling system instead of a large pouring gutter that erodes the dirt and drowns the plants. With this idea we would be able to be more sustainable by taking advantage of our frequent rains up at Konia and utilizing it for the land and plants. The other ideas are either too large to take on or do not have any correlations with physics that we can apply. This idea is simple and yet efficient. It could be easily applied to whole school and water can be collected and used for water systems instead of purchasing water. We can have more natural beauty with more A.C. water gardens around campus and we can save money, while using the resources given to us by nature. It's a simple solution that can easily be applied anywhere around campus that helps out everyone.

Friday morning we had the chance to talk with Kumu Chun and ask him about what he though were some problems here at Kamehameha. Kumu Chun said that we need to change the apathy of students and the moral of students and teachers. He aslo said that we need to find way to challenge people out side of the box. Kumu Chun said the we should allow students to have an area on campus where students can congregate at. At this place we would be allowed to make it better/take care of it for example we could paint it and plant flowers, basically it would be a place for student to hang out and/or study during free time. Kumu Chun believes that by having a place for student to go and having the students beautify it will create a sense of ownership resulting in pride for our school and if we give our students more school pride it will motivate student to want to do more for our school and make it a better place.

Interview with Alisna and Harvey

A couple of days ago I interviewed my homeroom teachers Mr. Alisna and Mr. Harvey. Mr. Alisna had a lot of problems in mind but however only one idea was able to be used for this project. They both believed that our high school should take the water from our air conditioners and use it to water native Hawaiian plants. I believed that this was a good idea and they also highly believed in sustainabililty. Our middle school already does this so I believe that our high school can do the same. This seems to be a very feasible problem that we can solve so we will look into this problem and hopefully find how this problem can relate to physics.

Picture from: http://kapiolani.hawaii.edu/object/plantsoverview.html

Interview With Mama Fuj

This afternoon I interviewed Mama Fuj, also know as Miss. Fujimoto, for her perspective on our problems here at Kamehameha. Mama Fuj has been with our school for many years and talked about changes that she has seen and changes that she thinks need to be made. One of her main concerns for this school is our communication. Mama feels that we communicate on a one way track with admin talking to us but student and faculty not getting to really talk to them. She made a suggestion that we spend more time getting to know each other on a friend to friend basis vs. student to teacher. Mama suggested that we create families with two students from each grade all the way down to our lower campuses as well hopefully deceasing the separation between us. Mama also talked about creating a rec center for upper campus students to go and show/share our talents with others when we have free periods because the only place right now is Midkiff. Although all these issues are important and worth taking the time to resolve, for our little physics group it would be hard for us to solve them and even harder to find a way that solves it though physics. Some of mama's other ideas were a little bit more within our range. She said that in middle school they catch the water from the air conditioners and use it to water their plants. Mama also said that we should collect the fallen fruit on campus and donate them to homeless shelters in stead of just letting them go to waste, or make a worm bins to compost our wasted food instead of just throwing it away. These were all super great ideas Mama gave us and i'm excited to share them with my group and to interview some other teachers as well.

What to do

So, as of right now we are still in the process of picking and choosing what issue we want to solve and how we're going to solve it exactly. We should have our interviews done by tomorrow and a solution readied. Tomorrow, we hope to confirm our problem and solution in order to create our proposal. I think we're doing pretty okay for now as long as we can decide and collaborate which shouldn't be a problem :). We still have issues with turning our solutions physically related. We have a lot of other issues with this school, but we don't exactly have a specific physics answer.

SOURCE: http://www.usmansheikh.com/time-management/decision-making

This comic is basically a summary of what we kinds of issues we are getting >,<.

If you can't see click on the link.

It's pretty funny :).

Blog

Today as we sat in class our group had big hopes of making progress on our project. Leilani and I tried to get our interviews done today but unfortunately we were not able to. I planned to interview Mr. Alisna because as a speech teacher he always has something to say. I'm planning on rescheduling my interview with him tomorrow because hopefully this time he won't have to look over speeches. Our group has come up with a lot of problems but we are unable to pinpoint a single problem. Upon completing our interviews with our designated faculty workers we hope to narrow down our selections of problems.

SOURCE: http://www.dogschasingcars.com/2009/10/two-interviews-to-check-out.html

Just A Suggestion

SOURCE: 
www.b-townblog.com/2008/11/05/learn-how-to-build-a-rain-garden-nov-12th/

SOURCE:
thepleatedzucchini.com/?cat=9

I recently worked with Hui O  Ko'olaupoko with making a rain garden. A rain garden is supposed to harness the rain water caught by the roof a building. A tube, usually PVC or ABS, runs from the rain gutter into a good sized depression in the ground like that of a pond where water can run and collect inside of off the roof. Inside of the hole there would be  plants of various types of Native Hawaiian plants that would flourish when the rains filled the garden as well as survive during times where rain was very minimal. We had to grade the ground and scale the garden to the size of the roof so the correct volume of water would be accounted for. By doing something like this for the school we would be able to not only educate in having a Native Hawaiian plant garden, but also by taking advantage of our own climate here in Hawaii to beautify our campus and to utilize water instead of wasting it and letting the run-off pollute streams. During the project they took account of the position of the plants, their lifestyle, the pollution of the water from the roof, as well as erosion and flooding. By doing this we could encourage Kamehameha Schools to have a more sustainable campus and maybe even using this technique to make other rain gardens around the campus or the state. We could also teach about conserving water instead of letting things like sprinklers come on when it's raining happen. It would be a fun and yet challenging project that we could install on our campus anywhere with a roof and some grass.

A little informational video

SOURCE: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK6tQgkuZZM&feature=related

Bug List

• Saving Energy
• Printing one sided pages
• No air conditioners with the door open
• Walking up stairs
• Long lunch lines
• Bad tasting food
• The dying tree in the back of "your class"
• People talking in weird accents
• To recycling more efficiently 
• Excessive lighting
• Graffiti 
• Muddy fields
• Wasting water