Engineering the “Yabba Dabba Doo”
By: Katherine Monroe
June 2014
Eleanor Roosevelt High School
One year ago, as a rising senior at
Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, MD, I was faced with the
same grueling task that all students in the Science and Technology
program were: RP- that is Research Practicum. This is what we had
been leading up to for the past three years and now, here it was.
RP is the year long research project
that all seniors in the Science and Technology program at Roosevelt
are required to complete. By the end of the year we had to have
completed a science fair backboard, a laminated poster, a power
point, and a five chapter paper. We had a whole class dedicated to
working on all the different aspects of the project and to learning
how to analyze data quantitatively and statistically. We were told to
come up with a project that was interesting to us because we would be
spending the entire year working on it. Some students applied for
internships with NASA, USDA, NIH, the University of Maryland, the
National Zoo, Walter Reed Hospital and more. Other students applied
for programs established by and within the school and other students
worked separately from any structured programs.
I chose to apply to a program started
by one of our school’s AP Chemistry teachers called WISP (Watershed
Integrated Study Program.) It was a program which emphasized local
water quality studies. Students in WISP formed groups and measured
chemical and physical properties of local waterways at a bunch of
sites across the county. We measured nitrate and phosphate
concentrations, dissolved oxygen levels, alkalinity, ph, turbidity,
total dissolved solids, temperature and took seasonal
macroinvertebrate data. We then added our values to an ongoing
database which students could draw from for all sorts of studies
which require long term data collection.
I applied to WISP because out of the
endless ocean of things I was unsure of I was sure of at least one
thing and that was my love for the environment and for being
outdoors. After having been accepted to WISP I began the process of
deciding what to do for my project. In the end the basis of my
project came from the one other thing I was sure of which was that I
enjoyed building things. So I knew I wanted to build something and I
knew it should relate to the local water quality movement that WISP
was promoting. I looked at what we did in WISP and thought about what
we measured. One aspect of water quality that I found important to a
gaining a comprehensive understanding of a stream or river’s health
(that we did not measure in WISP) was the speed of the water in the
stream.
The water speed
can provide insight into the types of organisms that can live in a
stream or river, to the flow of sediment down a river, and sometimes
to the oxygen levels of a river. The greater the speed of a river,
the more aerated it typically is, and the higher the dissolved oxygen
level. All of these can greatly affect the health of a stream or
river. Stream speed can also help in understanding volume flow rate
of a stream and in identifying storm water runoff patterns near and
around the stream or river and in developing flood models. Overall
stream speed seemed like an important factor that we did not account
for in WISP due to what I believe to be a range of reasons, the
expense of the necessary equipment, the complicated nature of taking
stream speed measurements at a variety of points along a stream and
still getting inaccurate results due to the variability of speed
along an uneven stream bed, and maybe more.
I decided that I
wanted to design and build something that would measure stream speed;
something that would be cost effective and accurate, and something
that would be easy for anyone who wanted to do research, like the
kind we do in WISP, to build for their own purposes. The point was to
encourage citizen science by going through all the steps
independently and then showing people what I had done so that they
could do it too.
In the end what
I came up with consisted of an open track along which a light and
neutrally buoyant ball was pushed by the flowing water. On either end
of the track there were magnetic sensors which timed how long it took
for the ball to move from one end of the track to the other. From
this the speed was computed. This is where the name of the device
comes in. I decided to call it the “Yabba Dabba Doo” because it
looked like something out of the Flintstones (or maybe like an
old-fashioned push lawn mower.)
Next I had to
figure out if my design actually worked. In order to do that, I
compared my device to an already existing speed measurement device by
the company Vernier. I assumed that the Vernier data was accurate. My
null hypothesis was that the average of the speeds taken with my
device would be statistically equivalent to the average of the data
taken with the Vernier device. Strangely enough, I wanted to FAIL to
reject the null hypothesis. Statistics are weird. I collected data
with each of the devices within a half an hour period of each other
(assuming that the stream speed would not change in that amount of
time.) Then I analyzed the data through a statistical t-test which
looked for a significant difference between the two sets of speeds
and their averages.
After multiple
trials and readjustments to the design I got what looked like a
pretty accurate result. Initially (before reaching my final design),
the object moving along the track of the Yabba Dabba Doo was a metal
disk attached to the metal rods of the track with metal rings. All
that metal caused for a lot of friction between the disk and the
track which prevented the disk from reaching the speed of the water
and gave me slower averages than the Vernier averages. This also
yielded a significant difference in the statistics which I did not
want. In order to minimize the coefficient of friction there, I
changed my design to one which consisted of that light weight,
neutrally buoyant foosball (which I mentioned earlier,) that was
attached to the metal track with small sections of plastic drinking
straw. The foosball had no tendency to float or sink in the water and
caused less friction on the track. Furthermore, the coefficient of
friction between the plastic straw and the metal track was much less
than between the original metal rings and the metal track. After
making this design change I got averages that were much closer
together between the Yabba Dabba Doo and the Vernier and in a
majority of my statistical t-tests there was no significant
difference. In the end I had
a device that seemed to be working pretty accurately and cost $350
less to build than to buy the Vernier.
Going through
that process, of trial and error and trial and error and trial and
then success!!! was extremely gratifying. I got to experience the
life of an engineer first hand and to learn about the plethora of
unforeseen problems that can arise.
This entire year
was a great learning experience for me. I learned what a null
hypothesis was and how to go about trying to reject it (or in my
case, fail to reject it.) I learned all sorts of things about the
materials that I used to build my device. I learned how to bear
standing out in winter weather water up to my waist, wearing my mom’s
baptismal waders, for the good of science! I learned about all the
things that can go wrong and need to be accounted for in a field
study like this one. I learned how to access all sorts of functions
on excel, power point, and word. And I learned something about
myself. I learned that engineering, and I think in particular
environmental engineering, is something that I could easily be
passionate about and be satisfied with in the future. And for a
chronically confused and disoriented teenager about to go to college,
that is reassuring.
Below are the
full instructions on how to build exactly what I built. There is so
much that could be done to improve the design. I know it is not
anywhere close to perfect. The materials I used were makeshift,
whatever was lying around the house or wasn’t too expensive. But
that was the point. I like spontaneity. It doesn’t have to be
extremely elaborate to work and to be useful. This is for anyone who
wants to do anything with it or for anyone who is just interested.
[Back to your host: Directions on Monday ; The * is that Ms. Monroe normally goes by a more informal version of her name and I've gone with the formal here. Formal for publication is a rule I use myself (I'm not usually Robert), and one which I've learned is helpful for women to be taken seriously.]
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