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 :)