Maddy Slininger STEAM Senior Project
Thoughts and Considerations
During the process of my project there was a lot of things that I wish could have gone better. I wish that I would have spent more time working on things that would have been able to better show how the devices could be incorporated into daily life. I also wish that I would have had more time to get more consistent results because a lot of the results I had I could say fit in a range and weren't spot on every time. Lastly I wish that I had a better idea of my final project in the beginning so I wouldn't have had to spend as much time rethinking the end goal.
Challenges and Success
The biggest challenges I faced during this process were with circuitry and just not knowing what my next steps were. With the circuity the main challenges were just doing things backwards because I had so much going on. And then the new hydro turbines were wired backwards and didn't want to work together and so I spent longer than I would have liked trying to get them to work. I also feel like I hit a lot of walls because I was either limited by my own abilities or I just didn't know where I wanted the direction of my project to go. Lastly another challenge I faced had to do with the fact that I am a visual learner and tend to learn best from trial and error. Because of this some of the things that shouldn't have taken very long took me longer because of experimentation.
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Some of my success though came from knowing a little bit about everything. And so even though circuitry was my biggest failure I did have some background knowledge in circuitry which allowed me to keep working on how to fix the problems I ran into. Furthermore it was super rewarding to learn so many other new skills such as learning how to cut and glue pvc, which is a skill I can now take with me. And lastly a huge success (and reward) for me was speaking at the expo I both really enjoyed talking about my work and and then also getting to hear other peoples opinions about it.
Project Summary
My project was a collection of visuals to show the community about small scale renewable energy. Within this I had two hydro turbines, a wind turbine, a video explaining the benefits and and viability to small scale v.s. large scale renewable energy, and posters showing my process and how else the devices can be used. My goal with all of this was to convince community members that small scale renewable energy is a viable option as it can be easily used in daily life and isn't all that expensive of difficult to use. My project has changed so much from beginning to end with originally wanting to create a new source of renewable energy to switching gears to just trying to get people to use it. And over the course of the project my ideas for the expo changed so many times I don't even have an account for them all. However in the end I am very happy with the work that was put out.
Future Goals
My goals are to continue with what I have learned and create a social platform highlighting different small scale renewable energy sources. I will do this by creating a website and other possible social media platforms to show different products on the market and how I have tested them to see how much voltage they produce and if they would be something easy to use for the general public.
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I also hope to take some of the other skills that I have learned through the STEAM program with me. In particular being flexible and open to failure. Coming into high school I thought the only thing that was important was receiving good grades and the only way to get there was success. I quickly learned through this program though that isn't the case, what is really important is failing and learning so that I can continue to grow and make progress.