New Science Building Design.
In this project my group made a design we could use for the new science building being built on our campus. We had a budget of 10 million dollars. My group's design had an L shaped area full of classrooms and a huge courtyard. We spent about three weeks working on this. We also learned about the Earth's layers, the solar system, day lighting angles, and atomic structure so that we could more understand what we had to know to make our design. These lessens allowed us to better understand where windows should be placed and what materials would be good for our building. Then we presented our design to the engineers that out building the building so they could get ideas and also give us feedback.
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The Earths Layers
In order to make our design we had to learn what we were building on so we spent a couple of classes learning about the Earth's layers. The Earth has 4 layers the crust, mantle, inner core, and outer core. The crust is the outermost layer and is made mostly of rocks and metals. The mantle is under the crust and is made of molten rock. The core is made up of the outer core and inner core. The outer core is made out of iron and nickel. The inner core is made out of some sort of iron-nickel alloy but we are not really sure what it is made out of. We also learned about P and S waves and how they affect earthquakes. P waves are the first waves that come and are faster and can go through liquids. S waves come second are slower and can only travel through solids.
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Model of Orbits
Our group made a model of our solar system. We had to find a phenomena and use it to create a model. Our model explained how the orbital velocity and how far from the sun a planet is to predict the planets orbital period. We used our model to predict the orbital period of the mysterious planet X that our teacher gave us. Using this information it helped us better understand how the Earth and other planets orbit the Sun. This helped us understand how far and at what angles the Earth is from the Sun allowing us to place windows more efficiently.
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Solar Angles
We learned about how the suns angles work. The sun's angles are always changing throughout the day and year. In Novato it is generally in the South, but it rises in the East and sets in the West. The Sun rises until the afternoon then it stats to go back down. In the Winter it goes lower and in the Summer it rises higher.Knowing where the sun is allowed us to design the windows in the right places.
Our Day lighting design model
In order to test what day lighting techniques work best we designed a model house. We filled with different day lighting techniques such as clerestory windows, light shelves, solar tubes, and sky lights. Then we shined a flashlight at different angles representing different times of the year and day. We took data seeing which rooms lit up at different times of day.We found that solar shelves facing East worked really well in the morning and afternoon in the Winter. Using this data we were able to figure out where we should place all of our day lighting techniques.
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Atomic Particles
To learn how heat works and also what everything is made of we learned about atoms. Everything is made up of matter which is made out of molecules. Different atoms make up these molecules. Atoms our made up of mostly empty space. They are also made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons and neutrons make up the nucleus. The amount of protons define the element. The amount of neutrons can change slightly in the same element creating different isotopes. Electrons bounce around outside of the nucleus disappearing and reappearing randomly not traveling in between the two points. Electrons can also jump in between atoms.
Justification Document
In order to understand why we need to conserve electricity our entire class filled in this energy justification document. It shows all the different forms of acquiring electricity and the benefits and negatives of them.
Reflection
In this project their were many things that I did well and there were also many things that I need to improve on. Two things that I did well were work ethic and communication. I was almost never off task during this project. This allowed me to be very productive and help my group greatly. I also was able to communicate my ideas to my group very effectively. This allowed us to all be on the same page making it easier to work together.
I also have some areas where I could improve. I need to work on my empathy and my leadership. There were many times where I would dismiss a group mates idea without fully hearing them out. This caused our group to have less ideas even though they could be useful. I also need to work on leadership. At points during the project my group was off task and I failed to bring them back on task. This lead to my group having less people working on the project.
I also have some areas where I could improve. I need to work on my empathy and my leadership. There were many times where I would dismiss a group mates idea without fully hearing them out. This caused our group to have less ideas even though they could be useful. I also need to work on leadership. At points during the project my group was off task and I failed to bring them back on task. This lead to my group having less people working on the project.