Creative Engineering
For our final project of the first semester we choose a world issue that needed to be solved. This could be a huge problem such as air pollution or as small as baby birds' malnutrition. The chosen problem needed to be solved with a machine or other object as opposed to social engineering. Originally our group had decided to try and solve the problem of poaching. However, after a couple days of research, we found that there were already many solutions in affect for this problem and any other options were not physical engineering. We quickly shifted our focus to CAFO's, more commonly known as factory farms. The main downfall of these factory farms is the excessive amount of manure produced. For our project we decided to try and solve this problem by collecting, then converting the manure. These two actions each had a respective design. To collect the manure we designed a small robot to go through animal stalls, scooping up fallen feces. This robot then deposits its load into an underground chamber. In the chamber, the manure is heated and pressurized. After two hours it will have become fertilizer ready to be used to grow plants.
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Physics Concepts
Electrical Energy - Energy stored in charged particles within an electrical field
Both of our systems run off of electrical energy.
Heat - Energy stored in the movement of particles
Heat is used to speed the process of composting.
Air Pressure - A measure of the force exerted on a surface by the weight of the air
Pressure is used to create an ideal environment for composting.
Engineering Design Process
1) Define the Problem
2) Do Background Research
3) Specify Requirements
4) Brainstorm Solutions
5) Choose the Best Solution
6) Develop Solution
7) Build a Prototype
8) Test and Repeat
Both of our systems run off of electrical energy.
Heat - Energy stored in the movement of particles
Heat is used to speed the process of composting.
Air Pressure - A measure of the force exerted on a surface by the weight of the air
Pressure is used to create an ideal environment for composting.
Engineering Design Process
1) Define the Problem
2) Do Background Research
3) Specify Requirements
4) Brainstorm Solutions
5) Choose the Best Solution
6) Develop Solution
7) Build a Prototype
8) Test and Repeat
REflection
While working on this project, my group encountered many obstacles. Our first and major problem was that of our problem we were trying to solve. We lost two full days of research time because we ended up needing to change our focus. However, we worked diligently and were able to catch up quickly. Our entire group worked very well together and successfully completed the project. Another problem we encountered was in modeling and designing our solution. We knew exactly what we wanted to do, but we did not know how. This took a lot of our time but after three iterations we settled on our final design. Overall, we had a good understanding of our problem and used this knowledge to solve our problem with relative ease.