overview
For this project we were told to create an approach to create our own house and also a way to make our STEM solar studio that was built by last years freshmen in stem more efficient. There were many different approaches to this problem and our group decided to go with two reflectors that reflected sun rays into the studio's window that was not getting any sun into it and was basically pointless. Also we created a solar water heater to create a better way to heat water and see what's most efficient to do it.
Daylighting design lab
In this lab we were told to make a scale model of a house that allowed maximum sunlight with many different techniques but the catch was we were only limited to 1000 square feet to design our house. The house we constructed had a unique design that had a rectangular look that had a corner cut out of it the allowed double windows with lots of sunlight. Our house only included 6 rooms and only 3 kW are used for light bulbs. This project really made us think of how houses built and why they are built that way which was very interesting to find out.
northern window proBlem
This project was very interesting, we were told about a feature on the solar studio that was pointless. It was the northern facing window. This window was allowing barely any sunlight/sun rays into the house. Most groups went either one way or the other to tackle this, some groups went with a curtain that reflected the sunlight from another window instead of letting it escape through the north window. The other groups went with a reflector panel on the outside of the house that would reflect the Suns direct Rays into the house. We chose to go with the reflectors. Our group had 2 reflectors to get maximum sunlight in. Even though our project didn't get selected I still had a lot of fun doing it.
coldframe
in this part of the project we were told to create a cold frame that would keep plants warm at night. Our cold frame has an interesting design. Our frame was design in a triangular prism shape, which allowed maximum sunlight in that was trapped. Our cold frame was covered with glass that would trap heat in it which is called a green house effect. When our group was getting judged we were asked how to keep gophers from digging under our cold frame and eating the plants. Our group had never thought about this, but a good solution to that would be chicken wired underneath. This was my favorite mini project out of the others in this big project because it was unique and our real things that people make.
reflection
This was one of our longer projects but it was also a very fun one. This project really showed what it's like in real life and how to solve the problems. I also believe that it would have been nice to change groups for the mini projects because a lot of people were getting tired of their groups/ it's also good to hear other different ideas from people. I would give this project a 3 1/2 out of 5 stars for those reasons and there is room for improvement for stem students in the future. This project really helped me for the future and I found it very Effective and interesting.