Friday May 27th Update

Earlier this week, David set up the laser cut files for the ribs of the mound and Grace constructed the 2'x4' base. Alison and Paul worked on the text that would appear on both the poster and in the exhibit.

Today, we worked on finalizing the whole design of the exhibit as well as the poster layout. For our three panels, we are planning on having the first one be the money shot and an introduction of the importance of the exhibit (info from the survey conducted earlier in the quarter, purpose and goals, etc.). The second one will have site information and our general design concept. The third one will show the specifics and mechanics of the actual exhibit inside the mound.

We have distributed the work and will reconvene on Monday to tie up loose ends.

WED 5/25

The pictures from the previous post show a more detailed outline of the content we will include on the 3 pages of our project poster. We started an Indesign file to model the poster. In addition to refining the poster design, we have decided to make a model of the magnetic board that we will include in our exhibit. The map below shows the geothermal locations in the area that will be marked with metal from behind the board. A magnet will allow users to located the spots on the map. Information will be presented next to the map to inform users about the local geothermal potential.

Our physical model is being made, and our previous sketches presented earlier in the quarter will be modified to include our most recent additions. We have decided to include solar panels on

top of our model that will power the lights in the exhibit's interior. Also, we want to include a seismograph that will map the current temperature above and below the ground for the current week at our exhibit (example below) so that the user can compare and see the potential energy available under the ground. We initially wanted to give the users the option to map the current temperature, however due to vandalism concerns we have decided to not make this portion of the exhibit interactive. It will be moving, so we believe that it will attract people as is, and they will be able to see and interact with the other parts of the exhibit.

monday may 23

We've nailed down the final three displays in the exhibit, detailed in the previous post. we've detailed each one a bit better, for example deciding on a system to push air through the ground source heat exchanger display. We've also flipped up the edge of the hill in order to provide a protective railing for those occupying it's upper surface. A physical model has been started, to be completed soon hopefully.

Friday

Today we found geothermal heat sources in SLO

http://www.slocity.org/utilities/energy.asp

the palm street parking lot/office building uses geothermal heat pump.

We also had guest speaker, Chad Worth (sp?) come in to help us with ideas. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture, but we created 3 interactive components*:

*Note, we are keeping the hill

1. Magnetic Wall Map of SLO County- repulsion from magnets=deep pockets of geothermal energy hot spot

-attraction from magnets=surface pockets of geothermal energy hot spots ie hot springs

2. Display of temperature change underground and above ground (not quite interactive, but interesting to watch as it updates)

3. Feel the temperature tube- swivel fan to blow at your face, then compare when you swivel the fan into the tube, so cool "underground" temperature flows out of tube and onto your face/hand/etc

We need to find a way to make it flow either large scale to smaller, etc to make less choppy and more understandable to get our point across

Continued Work...

On Monday, we went over to the Library to look at the "Look the Other Way" exhibit. We were able to interact with the exhibit and see what worked well and what did not. Beforehand, we read over the critiques of our design from the midterm review on Friday. From reading people's comments, we learned that we really need to focus on what actually goes on under the mound. It needs to be more interactive, and the concepts that we want people to learn need to be more clearly defined. We also need to think about the construction of the exhibit.

Today, the professors presented the deliverables for our final review. We basically have two more weeks to have a concrete idea for our exhibit and execute a three-panel poster presentation. We also plan on having a physical model. As we were trying to figure out how to fix the issues brought up by the critiques, we discussed about possibly talking about the other form of geothermal energy that taps into the deeper layers of the earth. Chad Worth also talked about mentioning the hot springs or the fish hatchery that uses geothermal technology. Right now, we feel like we have reached a standstill because we keep coming up with downsides to all of our ideas that make them impractical. On Friday, Chad is going to meet with us to help us focus our project and guide us onto a more practical path.

midterm presentation

 collage from afar

 collage up close

initial rendering