Creative Engineering
World Problems- Solving Drought By: Camille Obert, Jacob Kennedy, Hana Ongwongsakul, Sebastian Zarrehparvar
Drought! A prolonged period of time where there is an abnormally low rainfall; a shortage of water resulting
Stats for California
●cut water use is 11.5%
●two basic methods for breaking the bonds in saltwater:thermal distillation and membrane separation
●past dry periods in California have lasted more than 200 years
●people use 80-100 gallons of water a day
●water budget priced higher to encourage conservation
More Stats
●roughly 70% of an adult’s body is made up of water
●between 70-75% of Earth’s surface is made up of water
●of all the water on Earth, humans only use 2% of this water
Types of Drought There are 4 types of drought
1.meteorological-general lack of moisture in weather
2.agricultural-atmospheric moisture is reduced
3.hydrological-deficiency of surface water and ground water
4.socioeconomic-energy, food, and drinking water are reduced or threatened by changes in meteorological or hydrological changes
Causes of Drought
Lack of rainfall
Global warming
Human factors and excessive use
Surface water flow
Our Desalination
●Function- to turn salt water into fresh drinking water
●fresh salt water is heated up into steam
●the tank uses the sun’s energy to heat up the water
●if the sun is not shining, we use the heat from the fire underneath the tank to heat it up
●the steam rises and collects into water droplets
●water droplets slide down the glass into the tubes around the bottom of the dome and collect into the clean water tank
●Function- to turn salt water into fresh drinking water
●fresh salt water is heated up into steam
●the tank uses the sun’s energy to heat up the water
●if the sun is not shining, we use the heat from the fire underneath the tank to heat it up
●the steam rises and collects into water droplets
●water droplets slide down the glass into the tubes around the bottom of the dome and collect into the clean water tank
Engineering Design Cycle
1. Identify the need: To turn saltwater into freshwater by the process of desalination
2. Look into the Problem: We searched over several days for information about desalination and found that when salt water evaporates the salt in it stays making the evaporated water fresh water.
3. Finding Solutions: We figured that if we made a dome shaped container that the fresh evaporated water could slide down the smooth sides
4. Select the Best Solution: We chose a dome shape because it collected water the best
5. Construct a Prototype: We used cardboard, wire, plastic wrap ,multiple containers, and tissue paper
6. Test and Evaluate the Prototype: We were unable to test
7. Communicate the Design: We made a powerpoint presentation which you can see above
8. Redesign: We did not have to do this
9. Repeat
Creative engineering project
The purpose of this project was to chose a world problem and build a design that could help solve it. Then we deeply studied the problem so we could have a deeper understanding of it and be able to think of creative ways to solve it. The group I was in decided to chose drought because we felt that it was too major and had too much of a negative impact on the world for us to not chose it.
Reflection
Over the course of this intriguing and fascinating project I learned a lot and had lots of fun. One of the things i thoroughly enjoyed about this project was the amount of research we did because it enabled me to get a better connection , and understand the project in more depth so i could really develop a solution that i stood behind and agreed with. I also really liked my group and felt that i really connected with each and every one of them. I felt that i had a lot of fun experimenting on different ways to desalinize. Although there where many good things about this project there where also some bad . One of the negatives was that i took my group a while to find out how we could bring the water into the bowl the best. Also the fact that the sarran wrap kept coming off our project . Finally the tube water wasn't having enough power to go through the tube to the cup. Although there where a couple lows to this project the all around learning experience from this project was superb and i had a lot of fun with it .