CEPi1 (27)

The CEPi1 team (#27) is from Albuquerque. This year they've submitted a project titled Water Filterization.

Interim Report
http://mode.lanl.k12.nm.us/get_interim1112.php?team_id=27

Problem Definition
well we have plenty of drinking water that's contaminated, there are many ways of cleaning water. One way to clean water is runin it through some charcoal, or there are other types of filters such as, rocks, sand. All of these forms of filterization cleanses the water and takes all the dirt and other non-drinkable stuff.

The goal of this project is to create a water filter for all the dirty water in our area.

Problem Solution
Our solution is to cleanse the water with all the purifier we can think of. Then take that water and run it threw a filter and test which one filters out the water the fastest. there are many different solutions to this project but the main idea is to cleanse the water as much as you can. so were gonna take all these steps and put them into one and clean the water as fast as possible.

Progress to Date
There are many different places to go to test different methods on how to clean the water. like explora is a good education place to pick up some intelligence. when we went to explora they had us in a class with a tube with rocks and a rag at the bottom. we would put the water in the tube with rocks and watch the water filter threw and come out cleaner than before.

Team Members

 * Nick Martinez
 * Esteban Romero

Sponsoring Teacher
Jerry Esquivel

Introduction
Hi,

My name is Tom Laub. I work at Sandia National Laboratories doing radiation transport simulation and analysis. See the biography on my User Page.

Project Description
This seems to be a good project that can be well-defined and with a definite completion target. As I understand it you want to simulate several water purification processes and then see if using combinations of them in series results in better purification. You have focused on filtration as the purification process but there are other ways to make water drinkable. For instance, you might want to look into processes that kill harmful organisms in the water but do not remove anything. A process like that might be a nice addition to the filtration processes.

Progress To Date
I do not see signification progress. I see a list of plans but it does not seem that you have actually done any of the things you list. You need to get started--the year is ticking away!

Mentor
I do not see where you have a mentor. Do you have one? If not, I encourage you to try to find someone knowledgeable on water purification. Perhaps the keynote speaker from the kick off,Dr. Edward Martinez, could supply possible mentor names.

Model
In your progress to date there is no evidence of math models for the filtration processes you intent to investigate. I would expect that mathematical models for all of the filtration processes already exist and you just need to find and understand them. You should even be able to find models for processes that kill harmful organisms. Make a list of the processes you intend to investigatge and go find existing models. A simple program could be used to evaluate the effectiveness of each process and different combinations of processes. What programming language are you intending to use. For this kind of project I would suggest Java/C/C++/Perl/Python or some other procedural language instead of StarLogo as this is project does not lend itself to agent-based modeling. If you need help with any of this please contact [mailto:consult@challenge.nm.org consult].

Face to Face Evaluation
Your next milestone is a face to face evaluation in February.

Rubrics
The judges will use these rubrics to evaluate your projects. Use them as checklists for what you need to communicate to the judges.


 * Expo Judges Rubric
 * Finalist Judges Rubric

Good Luck!
Good luck with your project and please ask for help when you feel lost or stuck.