The goal of our project was to provide affordible in home access to nutritious food. In its final state, people would have access to plants of their choice and fish to suppliment their diet. Our origional idea was to have the fish tank above the plants because gravity would have done a fantastic job of making things easier. We also planned on having the system be bolted down; we never planned on it being mobile. The janitors insisted on it being both mobile and stable, meaning that the entire system had to be on wheels and we had to organize a pump system. Not only that, origionally we planned on using half pipes to maximize the area available for growth We came to the conclusion that because of the pressurized nature of the adhesive, we couldn't do that. We ended up using a whole pipe with notches cut for the baskets to fit into. This was good, because had half pipe been successful, we would had many issues with overflow causing issues with the electrical systems. Our system's "final" form was seen at the expo. I put "final" in air quotes because our project will live on and continue to be worked on. The system people saw at the expo is shown right. It had three levesl of PCV pipe each with baskets of plants in it. There was a basin of water at the bottom and the grow lights were purple. The biggest place for improvement in our project was the absence of fish. That was the only part of our concept that didn't come to fruition.

 

The three most challenging aspects of our project, listed in order from most to least challenging were communication, getting the pipes set right, and the electrical work. As far as communication, it went quite well for the fist three months, but in months 4-6 I was seperated from my group. It was diffucult to adapt because of this. Luckily I could discuss exactly what was going on with them at lunch and via text so I wasn't flying totally blind, but there were days when I felt like it. Getting the pipes set was a massive pain as well. We spent about 2 weeks trying to find ways of making it all work, but nothing was paying off until we chaged from the half pipe concept to the notches concept. If we were to do it over, we would save 2 weeks on that alone. Likewise, the electrical work took a lot of time. It wasn't that it was diffucult to get right, seeing as we only messed up once, but it was quite time consuming to find all of the things we needed to get it done. There was one joint as well that took several hours to fix in place.

 

The three most reqarding parts of working on this project, in no particular order, were building communication skills, teamwork, and project planning. Through the seperation we had on the back half of the project, we had to get quite good at communicating the plan without showing each other what we wanted done physically. This resulted in me growing in my ability to communicate with others. Tied into that is teamwork. The best part of working with two partners is the fact that I had a team. Delegating tasks, working together, and trusting my team to do what they needed to do were all ways that I grew as a result of this project. Finally, planning was also an important area of growth for me. Had we not created an adjustable gameplan before the end of month 3, I would have been totally in the dark about what to do for the next 3 months. Because the plan we created had to be flexable, I learned how to deal with that in a constructive way.​

 

The enitre STEAM experience was very valuable to me. The hands on skills I learned in these last four years will pay divitends for decades to come. Not only will the ability to think spacially and critically about a physical thing come in handy, but so will the soft skills. I learned how to better communicate my ideas, work in a team, and engage with the ideas of others in a productive way. I learned how to take criticism to head and not to heart. These are all lessons that will be curcial to my success in college and the job market.