Passive Solar Home Design
Our longest project took over a month to complete, the goal being to design a passive solar home that could be used primarily in the cooler months by students on campus. To start off learning about different heat properties (such as radiation, convection, and conduction, we designed and tested a solar water heater. Ours consisted of an insulated water bottle that cycled water through copper piping in a solar collection box. Then, we started going over the solar angles of the sun, and how they change as the seasons progress. Now armed wit this information, we started to design just the daylight portion of our house. Using cardboard as a mock house, we cut out the places that windows would occupy. We put our biggest windows on the south side and east side, a skylight on our roof, and numerous clerestory windows all over the place (these later didn't make it into our final design). To test the effectiveness, we used a light bulb to imitate the sun, and placed it at the aforementioned different angles, looking especially at the winter months, when our building would be used the most.
Now that we had learned most of the concepts and theory behind a passive solar home, we started to actually start making some decisions on our house. Our group went out onto the San Marin campus and looked for a site that would be optimal for a passive solar building. We needed a location that was relatively flat, was visible to the community, easily accessed, and most importantly of all, had good sun exposure. My team ultimately decided on the flat place in between the baseball field and the basketball courts, facing the football field. Next, my team (minus me, I was absent) did some materials testing. They tested everything from different insulations to different wall materials, and determined the best ones according to the amount of heat they absorbed and how long it held that heat. Using this information, we were then able to compile and price our materials list (most of our materials came, funnily enough, from Home Depot). Next, we sketched out possible designs, and after settling on one, we built a scale model of our final house and drew up blueprints. To get ready for presentation night, we made a poster to showcase our design. As a class, we made justifications as to why we made a home completely off of the electrical grid (see below for the actual chart comparing all fo the alternative energy sources). For our final act, we all presented a very solid, well rehearsed showcase of our house at the presentation night, of which I am very proud, but that's in the next section.
Overall, I liked this project, I learned how to be more of a follower than a leader, and I learned hoe to stick with a project and just focus. I played more of a...passive role in this project, I wasn't the one taking charge and being the facilitator. Instead, I let Griffin take control and dole out tasks and make the decisions, leaving me to just focus on the task at hand. I got a lot more done, not having to worry about the group as a whole, and just buckled down and completed everything that Griffin tasked me with. This also resulted in less stress and I wasn't always worried about the group as a whole. For example, when my group started to finish up, Griffin had Mikaela and Joe do the poster, while we worked on putting the finishing touches on our model. Whenever the former two had a problem, they would defer to Griffin, and I would be free to keep gluing or painting, instead of having to stop and sort out whatever their problem was. As I said before, not being the one in charge let me focus a little more, but sometimes I almost lost that focus for a different reason. Boredom. Plain and simple. This was a fairly long project, approximately two months long, with most of our other projects taking only half that time (this upcoming music one will only take three weeks). A huge portion of it was researching the cheapest materials, practically took up two weeks, in fact. It was hard for me to sit in that chair for roughly two hours a day and not get distracted or simply go to sleep. I slogged through it, however, because I knew that this was a big part of the project, and later it paid off; we had one of the most complete and cheap materials list of any group.
While most of this project was great, there were a couple things that I could have done better on, mainly (ironically) sometimes being too passive or not focused. There is always a silver lining to everything, a thin line that once crossed, becomes the opposite. That is why love and hate are so closely associated. One can easily become the other in a heartbeat (put intended). This is also true with everything else and their opposites. Sure, it was great having less responsibility, but there were some days where I didn't do much more than hold some things in position, maybe be a supplies runner, but for most of the time just told really bad puns (not that I don't tell them when I'm productive though). I probably could have been a little more proactive and tried to get a little more involved. The same with my focus. There were some times when I just stared at my screen blankly for five minutes or more, either half asleep or thinking off on a tangent. There's a yin to every yang.
Concepts:
Radiation- the process in which energy is emitted as particles or waves
Convection- the transfer of heat by the circulation or movement of the heated parts of a liquid or gas
Conduction- the transfer of heat between two parts of a stationary system, caused by a temperature difference between the parts
Insulation- something that prevents or reduces the transfer or passage of heat
Absorption- the retention of heat
Reflection- the redirection of heat away
Temperature vs. Heat- Very simply, temperature is the measure of how much heat (or lack thereof) a substance contains.
Specific Heat- How much and how long a substance can hold heat.
Laws Of Thermodynamics- The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics states that if two systems are in thermal equilibrium with a third system, they are in equilibrium with each other (if a=b and b=c, then a=c). The First Law says that energy is neither created nor destroyed. The Second Law says that entropy increases. Finally, the Third Law says that there is always a tiny bit of heat, the temperature will never get to absolute zero.
Justifications:
Now that we had learned most of the concepts and theory behind a passive solar home, we started to actually start making some decisions on our house. Our group went out onto the San Marin campus and looked for a site that would be optimal for a passive solar building. We needed a location that was relatively flat, was visible to the community, easily accessed, and most importantly of all, had good sun exposure. My team ultimately decided on the flat place in between the baseball field and the basketball courts, facing the football field. Next, my team (minus me, I was absent) did some materials testing. They tested everything from different insulations to different wall materials, and determined the best ones according to the amount of heat they absorbed and how long it held that heat. Using this information, we were then able to compile and price our materials list (most of our materials came, funnily enough, from Home Depot). Next, we sketched out possible designs, and after settling on one, we built a scale model of our final house and drew up blueprints. To get ready for presentation night, we made a poster to showcase our design. As a class, we made justifications as to why we made a home completely off of the electrical grid (see below for the actual chart comparing all fo the alternative energy sources). For our final act, we all presented a very solid, well rehearsed showcase of our house at the presentation night, of which I am very proud, but that's in the next section.
Overall, I liked this project, I learned how to be more of a follower than a leader, and I learned hoe to stick with a project and just focus. I played more of a...passive role in this project, I wasn't the one taking charge and being the facilitator. Instead, I let Griffin take control and dole out tasks and make the decisions, leaving me to just focus on the task at hand. I got a lot more done, not having to worry about the group as a whole, and just buckled down and completed everything that Griffin tasked me with. This also resulted in less stress and I wasn't always worried about the group as a whole. For example, when my group started to finish up, Griffin had Mikaela and Joe do the poster, while we worked on putting the finishing touches on our model. Whenever the former two had a problem, they would defer to Griffin, and I would be free to keep gluing or painting, instead of having to stop and sort out whatever their problem was. As I said before, not being the one in charge let me focus a little more, but sometimes I almost lost that focus for a different reason. Boredom. Plain and simple. This was a fairly long project, approximately two months long, with most of our other projects taking only half that time (this upcoming music one will only take three weeks). A huge portion of it was researching the cheapest materials, practically took up two weeks, in fact. It was hard for me to sit in that chair for roughly two hours a day and not get distracted or simply go to sleep. I slogged through it, however, because I knew that this was a big part of the project, and later it paid off; we had one of the most complete and cheap materials list of any group.
While most of this project was great, there were a couple things that I could have done better on, mainly (ironically) sometimes being too passive or not focused. There is always a silver lining to everything, a thin line that once crossed, becomes the opposite. That is why love and hate are so closely associated. One can easily become the other in a heartbeat (put intended). This is also true with everything else and their opposites. Sure, it was great having less responsibility, but there were some days where I didn't do much more than hold some things in position, maybe be a supplies runner, but for most of the time just told really bad puns (not that I don't tell them when I'm productive though). I probably could have been a little more proactive and tried to get a little more involved. The same with my focus. There were some times when I just stared at my screen blankly for five minutes or more, either half asleep or thinking off on a tangent. There's a yin to every yang.
Concepts:
Radiation- the process in which energy is emitted as particles or waves
Convection- the transfer of heat by the circulation or movement of the heated parts of a liquid or gas
Conduction- the transfer of heat between two parts of a stationary system, caused by a temperature difference between the parts
Insulation- something that prevents or reduces the transfer or passage of heat
Absorption- the retention of heat
Reflection- the redirection of heat away
Temperature vs. Heat- Very simply, temperature is the measure of how much heat (or lack thereof) a substance contains.
Specific Heat- How much and how long a substance can hold heat.
Laws Of Thermodynamics- The Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics states that if two systems are in thermal equilibrium with a third system, they are in equilibrium with each other (if a=b and b=c, then a=c). The First Law says that energy is neither created nor destroyed. The Second Law says that entropy increases. Finally, the Third Law says that there is always a tiny bit of heat, the temperature will never get to absolute zero.
Justifications:
Presentation: