New round of design sketches

Megan Gossett	Megan Gossett	Megan Gossett
Megan Gossett	Olivia O'Hern	Annie Martin
Anslem Lucio	Anslem Lucio	Andrew Morse
Andrew Morse	Andrew Morse	Chris Espejo
Jennifer Bauter	Lyani LaSanta	Lyani LaSanta
Richard Smith	Sam Trevino	placeholder
placeholder	placeholder	placeholder

in the bag

The students began to build the first bags to start observing the process. We came up with some design solutions to make the trough much easier to make. Some people elected to start working very big.

Here's  a couple of images:

 

The whole group went into extra time after the class to continue working on this and the grant!

more information and planning

We had another visit from our guest artist/mentor Elizabeth Demaray today. Elizabeth shared her observations and advice on how to structure and write a grant proposal for  a totally experimental point in the project. The students also shared the experimental results from the plastic exercise on Tuesday and reported on the Botany lecture.

money, money, money

Some of the student have told me that they want to apply for a Office of Undergraduate Research Grant of $1000 to support the research project. This exciting and terrifying because it is due in 48 hours and we don't have a clear experimental plan or design to reference for the proposal. I called the Director of OUR to bounce the idea and she was surprisingly excited and she believes we can work around the vagueness.


So the students have decided to go for a $1000 grant; we had a rush meeting to assign everyone roles to contribute to the process. I am frankly astounded but very warmed by the spirit and passion this group is demonstrating. Wish us luck!

Experts in our midst

We had a guest lecture from Dr. Theodore Fox and Ms. Patricia Rees from UWF Botany. There are many interesting mechanisms at play in the transpiration. Wind, touching the plant, CO2 concentrations all affect the transpiration rate.


One rabbit I want to chase is the Water Potential, it appears that if you can understand this metric you can write a formula to predict the transpiration rate.

Design sketches from ovenight

Designers received a very short briefing on the goals and client on the 10th. This semester we will be using a Peace Lily (Genus Spathiphyllum). These species are have higher transpiration rates and are also noted for their propensity to accumulate toxins.  In this experimental course we know that we will be trying to collect the transpired water vapor back as liquid water. Our fist challenge is to understand the process in the plants and processes condensing the vapor as well as strategies on how to conduct the condensate into reservoirs. Other design problems like concept, application, materials, etc. will be addressed later after we have studied the system for a few weeks

Designers were asked to submit sketches ideas for capturing transpiration from the Peace Lily based on the very short project brief on the first day. Here are the sketches I received:

Andrew 00	Andrew 01	Kayla 00
Kayla 01	Chris E. 00	Chris E. 01
		Jennifer 00
Jennifer 01	Olivia	Olivia
Slem	Slem	Slem
Lyani	Lyani	Lyani
Chris B	Sam	Thomas

first adventures

The plants have safely made it to the greenhouse. We have met Dr. Fox. We get to use the newer greenhouse, WOO!

We made temporary groups to carry out work. Students were given my phone number. We definitely need to make a spreadsheet of everyone's numbers and Dr. Fox asked for us to develop a calendar of times we need access to the greenhouse.