PLANNING OUT THE NEW BUCKTOWN

As we wrap up our last unit of this term, Urban Planning, we're thinking about redesign in a new way. We started off the unit by reading part three of Devil in the White City which gave us a better idea of the turn out of the Chicago World's Fair. We got to look into the design process for architects, what they wanted the experience to turn out like, their struggles, etc. This gave us some inspiration for our AP. We also dove into other cities around the world to get their view of urban planning, how they protect their city, and sustainable ways to redesign. We watched TED Talks to look more into the complaints and/or ideas of people from communities all across the U.S. We saw what differentiates the U.S. from all other countries. We were able to take a virtual F.E. to the Chicago World's Fair and understand its history, and where it lies in Chicago today. For our AP, we were asked to redesign a block within our community or take it as far as a block in another city in the world. Look at my slideshow down below to learn more! 

To conclude, I really enjoyed this last AP of my junior year! I think it was a great way to wrap up, and I it got me thinking more about my community and where I lie in it. I think that a lot of changes could be made to my area, and it's all up to me to get those ideas out there. I think that looking into other cities for inspiration got me thinking more about the urban planning in the U.S. and how it could be changed! 

The Key to an Energy Efficient Home

For this unit of our STEAM course, Urban Planning, we took a deeper look into circuits, circuit boards, energy efficient products, Nikola Tesla, and more. We started off by learning about Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison with their participation in the War of the Currents.  We then continued on and learned about direct and alternating currents, created by these two, and understood how the devices we use today are powered by currents like these. We looked into circuit boards and diagrams. The symbols that electricians use make diagrams simple and easy to understand. We learned about these because we would need them in a bit for our action projects. We looked into what electricity is exactly and how it is created. We had a Zoom call with an FE guest, Jaclyn Marcus, an architectural designer. We were able to ask questions from how lighting can affect a person's mood to what inspired them to become a designer, etc. These answers would help us when it came to our AP. For this AP, we had to create a circuit board that would power energy efficient appliances throughout a home that we created. Look through my presentation to learn more!



To conclude, I think this project allowed me to test out how far I could go in regards to creativity and design. I saw myself trying to think of new ways to get my circuit to power more bulbs, and I finally got a hang of it. I think even during these times, using new materials around the house allowed me to explore and test things out. I am glad that this AP allowed me to do that, and I would like to do the same for the next one as well! 

The Popsicle Bridge Challenge!

For Unit 1 of Urban Planning, we looked into bridges and how they can affect a neighborhood or city. We looked into different bridge and what keeps them sturdy. We learn the shape that is the most stable which is the triangle. We began to take a deeper dive into trigonometry and finding different ways to calculate the area of a triangle. For an FE, we had our STEAM teacher head out to Downtown Chicago where he was able to communicate to us via Google Meet chat and talk more about the architectural layout of the city. Get some of the ins and outs of what the city used to be compared to what it is now. We had time to research a bridge from any part of the world and look into how long it's been up for, materials used, etc. For This AP we were asked to build our own bridge solely out of popsicles and glue. This was quite the challenge, but click on my AP to learn more!

HOLY DIDDLEY BOW!

For this unit, Sound, in our STEAM course Light, Sound, and Time we explored the way that sound is not only produced, but how we interpret sound. Sound can deceive us depending on the way that we interpret it. We looked into the anatomy of the ear including how the pinna gets funneled into the eardrum to the three small bones called, the ossicles, to the cochlea which transfers sound to our brain.  We also had the opportunity to visit the Chicago Hearing Society where we were able to speak to some people who were deaf, we were able to ask them questions, etc. This was a nice opportunity for us to be able to look at the world in a different lens once we realized the challenges that came along with living in a society that is not accepting to marginalized communities. We also had a guest come in who was a sound therapist. She was able to give us a performance using different instruments that allowed us to not only calm us down, but also applied science. The doppler effect was phenomenon that we looked into throughout the course. This is when a sound source may appear to be heading towards us giving us a higher pitch than when the sound is heading away from us making sounds appear further away. For this AP, we made our own Diddley bows! The materials needed was an aluminum can, a battery, wood, a guitar string, and screws. The screws were used as tuning pegs to increase tension when wrapping the guitar string around the screw. The piece of wood was able to be used as fretboard, and the aluminum can was used as a soundboard in order to amplify sound. You can learn more about this AP down below!

Audio recording of my Diddley bow!

To conclude, I really enjoyed this AP. I thought it was a nice opportunity to learn more about not only sound, but think about it in the way that it may deceive us at times. I also thought it was interesting to get the different opinions from the people at the Chicago Hearing Society, and understanding that there is more that can be done in this world to include everyone. Next time, I would like to see what other instruments could be made with basic materials that I could find around my home. There are instruments waiting to be created around me, and I think this AP allowed me to understand that.

Transform Your Ordinary Transfer Shovel to a "Transformer" Shovel Today!

In my first STEAM course of the junior year, Design & Engineering, we discussed what tools are. We learned about the meaning of tools, different simple machines, and how they may be beneficial in our everyday lives. We started the term by going out to our school garden and picking up trash using only our hands, and also planted some plants. We calculated the amounts of plants that we planted in however many minutes we were out there just to get a rough estimate. The following week we did the exact same tasks, but this time we used gardening tools like hand cultivators, shovels, etc. We also calculated the amount of time we were out there planting and how many plants we planted. This activity showed us just how easy it is to use tools and how quick they can get the job done. We discussed different simple machines that we see in our everyday lives including levers, wedges, screws, and inclined planes. We also learned about the Pythagorean Theorem, Soh-Cah-Toa (trigonometry), ratios, and vectors. We also thought about how empathy can be a part of the design process when trying to sell your item. We thought about how not all tools and objects that we buy can be made for everyone. There are people in this world who are disabled and aren't able to use these items like everyone else would. This information would help us with our action projects that were coming up. We had the chance to visit Home Depot near our school and participated in a workshop led by an employee who taught us about different tools used for gardening, and we were given partners to work with for our AP's. While at Home Depot, my partner and I had to choose a gardening tool that we would be able to redesign for an elderly person. Prior to the choice of our tool, we were also asked to interview with a gardener. I interviewed my grandmother and throughout the process I noticed that she was finding it quite difficult to use the gardening tools due to her knee problems. My partner and I decided to take this problem into our own hands and redesign a transfer shovel that we had seen during our FE to Home Depot. Learn more about our redesign down below!
Defense: We have created an ergonomic “d-handle” transfer shovel that makes transferring soil and gravel easier without having to use so much force on your back or knees. The shovel takes out soil and gravel and makes transferring easier and speeds up the gardening process. Our shovel is contoured to your body and has an extension that can extend up to 70 inches. You can pull the handle bar in order to extend. Get a better grip by putting your handle on the “d-handle” that has been contoured to fit your hand comfortably and hold onto the lower grip just under the extension to take out that soil. We know that two of the most common problems that elderly people face day to day is dealing with back pain and knee pain. We want to make gardening still an enjoyable activity rather than a task. We have made sure to think about key elements that go into gardening without taking the fun away, but including safer elements to our design. We would say that our tool works like a lever. We usually see in shovels that in the input force is at the top which is where your hands are pushing the shovel into the soil. In our case, the fulcrum is in the middle (extra grip stabilizer) allowing there to be a balance once you take the soil out which is exerting force out of the ground. There’s an up and down motion and the fulcrum in the middle which makes it a 1st class lever.

What are the parts?

Extendable Length Optimizer: Works like a telescope just pull out each handlebar that extends 14 inches for each handlebar. In general, the ergonomic “d-handle” transfer shovel can extend up to 70 inches (5’10)

Bendable Handshape Grip: Fits your hand perfectly and comfortably.

Body: Contoured (wavy) body in order to make your job easier and work with your body shape rather than having a stiff & hard handle bar which puts more pressure on your back.

Extra Grip: Helps you stabilize yourself while transferring gravel or soil.

Latch/ Button: Allows you to detach the blade from the body making it easier to clean.

Blade: Aluminium based making the tool lighter overall, and we added some sharper edges at the end but not too sharp to be dangerous for anyone who uses this transfer shovel!

Here are FOUR reasons why our tool is better than the competition:
Ergonomic body: Fitting your body shape and making it easier to work with because the extra grip is at the right spot of the shovel providing maximum comfort on your back, less force is made on your back, and you won’t have to bend down as low which protects your knees from any pain.

Handle grips: Providing more comfort throughout the tool and using two hands in different areas gives not only better grip but more balance causing you not to fall.

Extendable Length Optimizer: Are you tired of having to put force on your back while gardening? Well, we have made our tool extendable up to 70 inches (5’10) which is the average height making it easier and not cause you to slouch down as much. Do not worry, the extension shafts in our shovel does not affect the overall weight of the shaft because although we use wood, the wood that is used for the shaft is thinner making the weight distribution feel lighter.

Blade: The blade can move in a 360 motion making it easier to scoop out and dump soil or gravel to your pile. Along with the 360 motion blade, it's detachable! This makes the cleaning process 10 times faster!

Purpose:

Throughout this unit, the idea of empathy kept coming up on our minds. What makes a design a design? I personally feel that a design should be well thought of before engineered. When designing a product, you should be thinking about different people in this world who all go through different situations rather than what you have experienced yourself. What makes a true design is when you think about the people that can use the design, and that's how your design can become successful. While I was watching my grandmother struggle with some of the tools that she used, I realized that many designers don't really think about their audience to whom they are designing the product for. Sure they get the idea, but do they actually test out the item before it reaches the market?

The process:
When I was talking to my partner about redesigning a tool, I made sure to discuss the issues that I had seen my grandmother go through to base our future redesign on those issues. Our issues were back and knee problems that correlate with one another when using a shovel. It's sort of like a cause and effect situation. If you bend down when taking soil out, you hurt your back. When you're bending down, you apply more force on your knees causing knee pain and damage. It's a problem that needs to get solved. While at Home Depot, we were looking at the shovels that we think can cause the worst back and knee pain. We chose not only the shortest transfer shovel, but the most uncomfortable to hold. The "Anvil D-Handle Transfer Shovel" was our competition. We worked with the shovel throughout the workshop led at Home Depot and realized that this may be one of the toughest shovels an elderly person can use. When we go back, we thought about different ways to improve the design without losing the idea of the D-handle. The D-handle was efficient when thinking about the grip in which you place your hand through. We created a rough sketch of our design the first day of designing and presented our ideas to the class. We received feedback from our classmates the second round of the design process for what we can change or what they liked about our redesign. We created a storyboard on how potential customers can use our design efficiently and effectively. Lastly, we recorded our volume and surface area of one part of our design, we included vectors of where our input and output forces can be found throughout the design, and found a relevant quote that inspired our design process. If you want to see this information, click on the slideshow down below!


Our Slideshow Presentation:

In conclusion, this AP was quite interesting to complete. This AP made me realize how important it is to think about everyone when designing a product. There are people in this world who are disabled and who aren't able to do day to day tasks. We should make products that are designed for everyone rather than products that only work for certain people. Also, you get more of an audience when you an include everyone making your design better than the competition. The next time I design a product, I will always think about empathy and pleasing my potential audience!

Say "NO" to Sinus Congestion

In this class, Cure, which is my last STEAM term of the year, we are looking into medicine. We looked into OTC(over the counter), Rx (prescription), and homeopathic remedies. We had an in-house guest who graduated from med school, and is going through her placement as an anesthesiologist. It was interesting to get her perspective on what she does and how she balances her life as a medical professional. For this AP, we were asked to make a medicine box. We looked into one certain symptom and found different ways to treat that particular symptom by looking into three different medicines that could treat it. Look at my AP to learn more about how to relieve sinus congestion!

The Lock and Key mechanism is basically a cause and effect for a chemical reaction. This connects to medication because we can use that cause and effect mechanism when we are looking for the correct medication to treat our symptoms. From pain medication we get a chemical reaction to our nervous system because our nervous receptors may get muted so that we don't feel pain or the swollen part of our bodies get healed.


To conclude, I found this unit to be very interesting! I liked looking into the different components of medicine, and looking into what really classifies certain medication. I think my favorite part was looking at different homeopathic remedies because alternative medicine does fascinate me. Knowing that there is ways to naturally cure or treat a disease instead of using a manmade prescription is something that people should be looking into. This unit really opened my eyes and allowed me to explore that! 

Nerve Decompression Surgery

For this unit we took a deeper look into surgeries. We started off the term by beginning to read a book called, The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks, which tells the story of a woman during the civil rights movement who has cervical cancer. We hear stories of her reaction to having cervical cancer, treatments, and more. Something special about Henrietta is that her cells were taken for multiple tests, but a medical professional at the time named George Gey sold them and they become internationally popular. As we go on in the course, we also looked into DNA structure and cell biology. For this AP we were asked to find a surgery we want to learn more about, and allow the audience to take a deeper look into the specific surgeries we looked into. I chose to look into Nerve Decompression surgery which is usually performed on people who suffer with migraines regularly like myself.

To conclude, this AP was very interesting to look into. For someone who struggles with migraines quite regularly, I thought it was nice to see that there are options to treat them. Migraines a constant struggle in my life and others, and it’s important to inform others on these surgeries, even something as simple as Botox, to treat migraines. This unit gave me inspiration to look into different surgeries and see the affects our bodies have when they are performed!

The Rose Bowl

For this class, Biomimicry, we looked into how humans have been influenced by nature in order to create designs.  We visited a company called Interface Flor and met with one of the workers, Mikhel Davis. He spoke about the company and how they use nature in order to create their carpeting design and different patterns found in nature. We also went to the Lincoln Park Conservatory where we observed plants. We chose a couple to look into closely. For this action project, we were asked to choose one plant in nature and create a design. I decided to look into the Rose of Jericho which is found in the Middle East. The design that I made also works with the Sustainable Development Goals created by the UN. Look at my slideshow in order to learn more about this plant and my design!


To conclude, this action project made me think more about how much nature has an impact on the designs we have made as humans. It made me think about how society should be influenced more by nature than the designs created by desire.  When we make designs, we should think about the people we are surrounded with day by day. We should make our designs based on world struggles. Zero Hunger should never be an issue. People like you should use engineering and the inspiration of other life forms to solve real-world problems. 

Marjane & My Grandfather

Welcome to the final unit of Stories. Throughout this term, we looked into the hero's journey and what that means exactly. We dove into Joseph Campbell's meaning of hero's journey and the stages that makes a hero. The stages that a hero in the movie has to go through in order to make a hero, a hero. In class, we were asked to find a fictional character to follow their journey, and point out why. Then, we were asked to find someone in our life that we consider a hero, and interview them. We interviewed and asked them their story, and labeled their journey with an explanation. Here is my last AP for Stories.

We had to choose a fictional character in a movie, so I chose Marjane from the movie Persepolis. I chose her because the Irani revolution is something that has affected the lives of Persians, especially young women. I wanted to get the perspective from a younger girl living her life during a revolution. What started this revolution was the growing economy in Iran which caused there to be more people graduating, and less jobs being given. In Mexico, there is a similar issue going on. There are not enough jobs, with not enough wage being given either. This made Ocotlan, Jalisco a poor city. My grandfather had been married, he was 19. He had his wife and four year old daughter. He knew they couldn't be living like this for the rest of their lives, and wanted a better future for his daughter. Both Marjane and my grandfather went through a transformation in their lives by one issue, economy. Now this doesn't really cross anyones minds, but money was behind all of this. Economy in both countries was what made these two heroes. You will see how this caused them to leave their country through the two slideshow presentations, and interview with my grandfather.
Interview With My Grandfather

Transcript of interview: Translated from Spanish to English
Q: How old were you?
A: I was nineteen, your grandmother was sixteen, and your mother was barely four years old.

Q: What was the purpose of you coming here?
A: I wanted a new life. I wanted to provide for my daughter and your my wife, as any man would do in Mexico. Look, in Ocotlan, everyone in the back of their minds knows there isn’t much hope for them in the city. There’s industries which I guess is a similar job to what I have now, but you have more potential in America, and we were aware of that. Plus, we already had some family waiting for us in California, and some family in Chicago.

Q: Did you make a plan on how you would leave without getting caught?
A: I had planned everything. We would leave at night time because it was less likely to get caught by border control. We would take breaks and sleep in the desert and keep walking. We would get there in the morning. We were young. We didn’t think about the most essential items, besides the ones for your mother. Looking back, I would have done things differently.

Q: Did anything not go according to plan?
A: A lot of things. It’s not good to plan for the future. You may think you have everything in check, but anything could happen. Many things did not go to plan. Getting caught was one, which was our major issue. I got caught by border control late at night which was something I had planned not to happen. I was sent back, but headed back the next morning and started the journey over so I could be back with your mother and grandmother. Then, your grandma was caught with your mom. They sent your grandma back, but your mom got to go in a van with other children that were separated from their parents. She was picked up by our family in California which she nothing about, until your grandmother and I got back to the U.S.

Q: Did you feel a guidance by anyone through the difficult times?
A: God. I was raised believing in God. I was raised in knowing to seek God through difficult times. I knew he was watching over my family and I, and that made me feel safe. Knowing that my daughter was going to be okay.

Q: How did you eventually get here?
A: I finally made it. It took me about 1-2 months to get here. I kept taking long breaks, trying to figure out new plans to eventually make my way. When we all got here, we stayed with the family I had in California. Eventually we got a car, and moved to Chicago. We lived with your uncle, my brother, for a while, and then we bought a house.

Presentation of Hero's Journey: Persepolis




Presentation of Hero's Journey: Grandfather



Overall, this action project allowed me to open my eyes on both people. For one, I was able to look deeper into the Islamic Revolution even outside of class. I was able to see how this revolution changed the structure of Iran, and how much of an impact economy can have on a whole country. Realizing that this is not only a situation in the country of Iran, but also in Mexico. I didn’t know that I could correlate the two, a nineteen year old guy and a young girl living in Iran. They were both going through two different issues, but both had to leave their country. This caused them to start a new life and without even realizing it, they became heroes.

NOT SO FAST NATURAL GAS

  My STEAM course this term is called Fuel. Throughout this course, we are exploring how we as a universe use fuel and the positive and negative effects that it has on the environment. We have three units, this one being our first where we explored nonrenewable and renewable resources. We explored the benefits and drawbacks that it had to the environment. For this AP, we chose a nonrenewable resource. I decided to choose natural gas, and I am basically trying to sell natural gas as being the most positive nonrenewable resource out of all of them. I chose a country in the world, Turkey, and compared their consumption of natural gas to our consumption in the U.S.

                        

Overall, this project has made me change my views on the consumption of fuel that we use in the U.S. compared to other countries in the world. This has definitely made me think about U.S. consumption not just in gas but in other things. The U.S. tends to use a big quantity of different substances that are effecting our planet, especially with our president who doesn't believe in global warming.

If You Can't Stand the Heat- It's Probably Global Warming

Climate change is an issue. What we did this unit was we spoke about temperature conversions, the carbon cycle, the difference in weather and climate, natural disasters, watersheds, number line, and atmospheric layers. "We had in house guests, like Mark Mesle who has observed climate change."We also had an environmental engineer from the EPA who spoke more about what she does and what she is building to help with floods across the U.S. Lastly, "we had a Skype session with a meteorologist from Florida where he spoke about his job, and how there are three different jobs that go into being a meteorologist: graphic designer, presenter, and scientist." We were assigned to choose a specific city where we would find the annual temperature change, based on the rise of CO2 in our atmosphere. I decided to choose Paris, France as my city and found results on what the temperature and global temperature change will be like in the year 2100.


                     

To conclude, global change will be affecting us, and as you can see by the results that I received climate change will even be controlling the way we live day by day. As I was doing my calculations and learning more on climate change I began to come to the realization that we must act upon this issue now. It's only in a matter of time that we will see more and more changes put into this world. As a developing country, we are finding more and more ideas, but these ideas may be effecting our environment in a negative way.