Ridgewood High School Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam December Blog
This was another exciting month for the Ridgewood High School Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam. Having hit the ground running in October and November, December was really a month of action. Our Engineering, User Experience, Human Testing, Research, and Communication Teams all had their particular jobs and made progress in their respects. This allowed us to make advances in many different areas which will guide us into the new year.
First and foremost, the design of our invention and its components have been developed and refined this month. Elliott of the Engineering team has taken the initiative of creating the cap for our water bottle. This proved to be a difficult task in having to factor the battery and electron holders together: “We are looking to create a plain base model that is functional and sustainability certified. As of now, the cap includes all necessary internals other than the circuit board, which is still in production and design, and the electrode, which is being modeled right now.” Through this month of hard work, he was able to design and 3D print the best cap yet.
Working in tandem, Hailey has been designing the wire base for the electron holder which is meant to go right below Elliot’s cap. This month, Hailey has spent a considerable amount of time contemplating and designing the right holder. Through many designs, she thinks she has found the right one: “We came up with what we call the T-design. A box that is slightly bigger than the width of the holder is molded on top of the right panel of the electrode holder. The holder can then easily be slipped through a slot in the body of the cap without it falling through. Two holes in the box allow wires to be attached to the electrode. This design allows electricity to be fed into the electrode without compromising the structure of the electrode holder and cap.” She is currently working to 3D print the model.
For the final aspect of the design, David M. has been working on different patterns for coating the teflon. This proved to be a very technical process: “I designed multiple patterns to cut the teflon sheet which we will use as a spacer between the two titanium plate electrodes. It will be used to prevent the electrodes from short circuiting and helps guarantee the production of H2O2.” With the cap, electron holder, and now teflon, our bottle is making progress toward our final prototype.
With the design moving full steam ahead, the Human Design Testing Team has also made progress. This month they completed their assigned tasks, and they are now working to implement what they learned: “The Human Subject Testing group passed a required IRB course in order to develop our protocol. This protocol explains what information we will be collecting through our survey once it is sent out. We have finalized that we will use SurveyMonkey in order to complete this task.” In the coming month, they will send out their survey to learn valuable information about our target market.
Furthermore, we are incredibly proud of Clare this month who achieved her Sustainability Certificate. This was not an easy class to say the least. Nevertheless, Clare learned a lot about sustainability which she hopes to bring to the team: “Sustainability is advanced in a sense that there isn't one straightforward path to a "green" product. But, by using sustainable design principles we can try our best to reduce our impact. Taking the sustainable design course, I learned about each phase in a product's life cycle, it's impacts, and ways to improve. It taught me how to think analytically and how to apply green chemistry into the engineering of our bottle!” We applaud Clare and thank her for her hard work.
Lastly, we have really reached out to our community this month. We designed and are currently writing a newsletter to send to those who have been involved with our project. This will be a way for us to keep in contact with members of the community and harness them for future projects. These connections have already helped us get in contact with the Ridgewood Water Departmentto test the effectiveness of our chemical process. Carina of the Research Team has been in charge of this effort: “The Research Team has contacted the Ridgewood City Water Department and decided how we will proceed with testing the bacteria in our water samples. We will send the water samples (before and after Solar Aqua Tech treatment) to Ridgewood Water in January. The department primarily looks for Total Coliforms, E. Coli, Legionella, Cryptosporidium, and Giardia in drinking water.” Connections like these are imperative to our development and fundraising for the future.
At the end of the day, we have had another month of significant progress. Our teams have worked so diligently over the course of the last three months. Each week we continue to have meetings where we discuss the progress of the week and plans for the future. Even as school has become busy and our seniors have been inundated with college applications, we keep on moving along. Now, we are going to take a small break for the end of December to rest up for a renowned push in the new year. We hope that everyone has a safe and relaxing holiday season, and we look forward to coming back stronger than ever.
