User:ClemonsLemons/project 0

My Instructor's course page which points to this.

Project
We decided to work on the bead project.

Problem Statement
The problem that we are trying to solve is how to transfer 1/4 cup of water from one cup to another using the least amount of beads as possible.

Project Plan
We decided to go home over the weekend and try to think of different ways that we could try to accomplish this assignment.

The first test I am going to run is a test to see how many beads it will take to transfer the 1/4 cup of water from one cup to another without doing any research in order to find out what the beads can do and what the smallest amount of beads that are needed to transfer the water. Once we find what the smallest amount of beads needed to transfer the water we are going to do some research to find out how much water the beads can soak up and how big they can get. We are then going to run to tests to test out whether the information that we found is credible or not.

We are going to research how much water the beads can soak up and what the biggest size they can grow over a given amount of time. Once the research is complete we are going to run two similar tests in two different temperatures to determine if the research we completed is credible or not.

The two tests that we are going to be running are one test where we are going to observe how big the beads are going to get over time and how much water it can soak up in room temperature and one bead at the temperature that the refrigerator is. This is the plan that we are going to follow:

1.) Put one bead in a water filled cup at room temperature in a clear space in the room and another at refrigerator temperature in the refrigerator.

2.) First we are going to measure the amount of water we place in the two different cups

3.) We are then going to cover the cup so that the water doesn't evaporate.

4.) Every hour we are going to measure the size and volume of the bead as well as how much water is left in the cup. The purpose is to see what amount of water is soaked up hourly.

5.) At the end of the day we are going to do the same. The purpose is to see how much water is soaked up daily

6.) We are going to continue measuring the size of the bead until it becomes apparent that the bead has soaked up the most amount of water possible.

7.) We then are going to state our findings in a graph showing the growth of the bead over time.

With the information obtained we are going to compare it with the prediction from the research that we did before these tests and see how accurate the research was. The next step is where we are going to try and predict how many beads are going to be needed to transfer the 1/4 cup of water to another cup using the information we just obtained. we are then going to test our prediction to see how far off the mark our prediction was.

After finding out how many beads we need to transfer the water te next step will be to try getting the bead to release the water and to find out under which conditions the beads need to be in in order to release the water. We are going to test how long this will take and how many ways there are of getting the bead to release the water.

=Week 1: Test Without Research= Materials

2 cups

Bag of beads

1/4 cup of water

Saran wrap

Design Ideas


 * Melt the beads together to form a kind of spoon to scoop the water out of one cup and into another
 * Place the beads in water and over a specific amount of time move one bead to the other cup and add more beads to the empty water. Repeat over and over again until all the water is soaked up by the beads and is in the other cup

Design Implementation


 * 1) Place one bead in the water
 * 2) Place eight more beads in the water and take out one of the beads and place it in an empty cup
 * 3) Place six more beads in the water but don't take any out
 * 4) Place seven more beads in the water and take out fourteen of the beads and place them with the other beads that were taken out of the first cup
 * 5) Take out seven beads and put them with the other beads that were taken out of the water before

Findings


 * It took 22 beads to soak up all the water from one cup to be placed in another cup
 * The beads grew to about 1 1/2 cm in 12 hours
 * It took 4 days to transfer all the water from one cup to another cup

Push


 * Try soaking up water at different temperatures
 * Try soaking up as much water as possible with one bead

RANt(reflect, analyzee, next steps)

Reflect


 * Should have done research to predict how many beads i should have used and it may have been possible that I would have used less beads than I did for when I tested how many beads without the research
 * Forgot to place something over the cup of water with the beads in it in order prevent the water from evaporating. Since I didn't cover the cup I may or may not have transferred all 1/4 cups of the water if indeed some of the water did evaporate.
 * The beads on the bottom may have been preventing the beads on the top from soaking up any more of the water because the bottom ones may or may not have grown so much that they may have pushed the other beads on the top out of the water

Analyze


 * The beads grew to 1 1/2 cm after only 12 hours in the water

Next Steps


 * Do some research on the beads in order to try and predict how many beads you need to use to transfer the water and it may be possible to use less beads than when you just randomly put some beads in and randomly take some out
 * Test how much water the beads can soak up in different temperatures
 * Find out how much water the beads can possibly soak up and how big they can possibly get in a given amount of time