The goal of this project was to redo a prior project. My group decided to tackle the creative engineering project once again. I wanted to redo this unit because I enjoyed getting to apply science to real world problems and getting to find a fun, creative solution. I also felt that I did not do a good job before and wanted a second chance to do my best.
The purpose of this project was to find a solution to a world problem. The problem my group and I decided to help solve was food waste. Food waste is a big problem all over the world. It creates toxic odors and liquids and releases methane gas into the air. This is unhealthy and very harmful to the environment and people. It is sad to know how much food is being wasted considering there are starving people in the world, and there is enough wasted food to feed them. Food is discarded at farms and grocery stores because they do not appear "pretty enough". This process is called culling. Culling is the removal of products based off of their appearance (size, color, weight, blemish level), quality, and sugar content. Most food is wasted at consumer's homes. Food is thrown out because it is moldy, doesn't look good, doesn't smell good, etc.
My group wanted to find a way to preserve wasted food from farms. This will allow for it to be sold and stay fresh for a longer amount of time. We researched how to preserve food and found that a vinegar is a good preservative because the microorganisms that destroy food cannot live in vinegar. We designed an experiment to test three different solutions on fruits and vegetables. The first solution was just water, the second was half water half vinegar, and the third was just vinegar. We decided to test fruits and vegetables because they are the two most rejected food groups. We soaked the food in the three solutions for fifteen minutes. Once they were dry, we sealed them in air-tight plastic bags and took them home for four days. Each day we took pictures of the food's progress. We found from this experiment that the just vinegar solution worked best. The other solutions molded. We also found that the solution only worked on berries. This could be though of our poorly designed experiment and error in carrying out the experiment. We did not find our data satisfactory and wanted to redesign and redo the experiment. Unfortunately, due to the lack of time we were only able to redesign the experiment, but not actually do it. We changed our experiment by testing more foods. This will let us know if the solution really only works on berries. We will also let the food fully dry before packaging it. This way the food won't mold quicker. We will also store the food in a plastic container so it doesn't get smashed.
Our solution to this problem was to pick up the wasted berries at farms and wash it in the 100% vinegar solution. We will then sell the berries at a small berry stand at $2-$3 (depends on the quality of berry). This will supply poverty stricken families and people with reasonably priced food. It will also put the discarded food at farms to use. Since the berries were preserved, they will last longer at homes giving them a better chance of being eaten and not wasted.
Concepts
Engineering Design Cycle: A series of steps engineers follow to solve a problem. 1. Identify need 2. Research problem 3. Develop possible solutions 4. Select promising solutions 5. Construct a prototype 6. Test and evaluate prototype 7. Communicate design 8. Redesign 9. Repeat We used this process when coming up with a solution to our issue.
Independent Variable: A variable that does not depend on others
Dependent Variable: A variable that depends on others.
Controlled Variable: A variable that remains constant.
Reflection
This was a fun, fast project to end the year. My group and I worked really well together and were very efficient. One thing I needed to work on was staying on task. Once my group and I were nearing the end of our project, I tended to get distracted with other things. This caused other people in my group to get distracted and we didn't accomplish as much as we should have. I needed to fix this by focusing more on the project. A second thing I needed to work on was thinking through a solution before actually using it. For example, my group and I didn't do an adequate planning and thinking through our experiment. This caused it to be sloppy and we did not get sufficient data. One thing I did well on in this project was communication. I was in a group with friends, which allowed us to communicate easily. Another peak of this project was time management. We did a good job planning out what we needed to accomplish. Because of this, we were able to complete our project early without any stress.