Tiller Kicks!

The first STEAM course of my Junior year, Design & Engineering, is about re-evaluating your definition of "design." Unit 1, Stronger, talked about how to use empathy to make a product more effective and useful for its users. The purpose of our Action Project was to change our product to be more elder-friendly. My partner’s and my tool was the "Hand Tiller." It seemed like a very fun tool to research and redesign so we were quick to choose it. The photos below depict our new product, the better and more elder-friendly version of the "Hand Tiller." It was quite hard to come up with ideas but it was fun at the same time. I had an interesting time and I hope you enjoy my project as much as I enjoyed making it for you! Thank you!

"Tiller Kicks" By JV. Sep 24, 2015.

"Tiller Kicks' Storyboard" By JV. Sep 24, 2015.

"The Physics Behind It" By JV. Sep 27th, 2015. 

The purpose of this assignment is to innovate equipment so that it is more effective for people of all ages. The user I am trying to appeal to is someone who has a garden and needs to turn soil. The assignment is focused on older people though. We learned a lot about empathy, which is feeling something for someone else. It relates to this project because we listen to what our elderly have to say, and start re-designing off of that.
I interviewed my grandmother, who is a gardener, and found out some interesting stuff:

• Tools are effective for older people
• Gardening is calming to some
• Your garden is also something to show off to others

Another thing that interested me was a certain quote she had said: “It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I can’t do it all the time. Don’t have the strength.” This fit in amazingly with my project since not all old people hate being active and gardening, but it just takes up too much energy and time. I also learned that the tool I chose has never been VERY elder-friendly. I’ve observed that all of these tools lack visual appeal and I have also examined the effectiveness of the tool and want it to stay effective but with less force applied.

Our new tool is "Tiller Kicks." - Jashawn Products. This product will be a strap on shoe, but it will have tines on the bottom to turn and mix the soil. Generally, it does what the original Tiller would do, but it can be worn on your foot. Also it's automatic with a small remote to turn it on. Initially, the tines turn under your feet when you turn them on, and MAKE SURE you take the safety locks off!
I believe this is an improvement because of 3 reasons:

• This can be worn on your foot
• It is automatic
• It is more effective than the original hand tiller

Applying my tool more to science, the tines at the bottom of the shoe serve as wedges, cutting and chopping up dirt and soil.

But, indeed, we encountered many obstacles and here's how we solved them; we discussed how to make the shoe safer. We came up with the idea of toe slip-ins/protectors and/or a firm bottom with a hard, light surface. We also discussed how to make it more effective but with less work. We came up with the idea of the Tiller Kicks Remote so you don't have to bend down to turn them on. More importantly, we discussed how to keep the user steady while they had one foot in their Tiller Kick. We thought about the Tiller only being placed on one foot so you have your other foot for balance and also making the tine at the bottom of the Tiller Kick durable enough to walk on.

Doctor To Patient

In the third unit of Cure, we discussed nutrition and diets, and how we can prevent out bodies from catching certain illnesses. We ultimately surrounded our unit around the question of, "How do we prevent, so cure is unnecessary?" Instead of revolving our discussions around how we get rid of certain illnesses or how we suppress the effects of certain illnesses, we instead, discussed how to take precautions to prevent those illnesses from even corrupting us in the first place. This Action Project is a video of dialogue between a doctor and his patient about how the patient can stay away from getting a certain illness. I chose to get a little creative, and made a slideshow hybrid for your enjoyment. I chose Diabetes as the illness for me to research. This was quite fun, I became really fond of editing videos, even though it's time-consuming!

Background Check: Bronchitis

In the second unit of my class, Cure, I though it would be "exciting" to study Chronic Bronchitis since I have it. We discussed what is supposed to go on a medicine box and why those things are important. We went over what symptoms were and how we are supposed to treat them, the correct way. We had little problem finding motivation, as we visited multiple stores to help us create our own medicine box! So our Action Project, as you may have guessed, is to create a medicine box! Your were right! We also used a QR code to link directly to my video...

Below is the 6 different sides of my medicine box, followed by a video of me, factorizing my box's sides by using quadratic functions. 

Degenderizing!

My very last STEAM course, CURE, revolves around how we can prevent or get rid of disease or illness. The first unit that we studied (Emergency) revolves around surgery and how it affects the body. Emergency is defined as an urgent matter or situation. That's what we discussed throughout the term. The purpose of this assignment was to acknowledge a certain surgery and learn how it affects the body and what it does to the body. I think surgery can be very useful at times and this comes as a compliment because many think it makes people "fake." This project was very fun. It's always fun to work with the Prezi program! I chose Adam's Apple Reduction because I wanted to better understand how the Adam's Apple works with the body.

Better Brush Your Teeth; Don't Wanna Get Yellow Fever

For the third Action Project of my Disease class, my peers and I were assigned to choose an epidemic that affected a population. The third unit of Disease is called "World," and that is exactly what we studied. We discussed, throughout the unit, how diseases affect the world; hence the term: epidemic. I chose Yellow Fever, a disease transmitted from Mosquitoes. Specifically, the Yellow Fever outbreak in Barcelona, Spain in 1821. I chose this epidemic because Yellow Fever has always been very interesting to me because there's so many Mosquitoes in the world and one could possibly end your life. This is even more interesting because I got bit by hundreds of them over the last summer. This project was not easy, but as usual, it was super fun to complete!

Below is a visual of some places that were affected by my disease:

What is Yellow Fever? Thanks for asking! Yellow Fever is a disease that you can get from Mosquitoes, normally in Tropical South Africa. The species of the mosquito is: Aedes Aegypti. Yellow Fever is commonly transmitted by the female mosquito. This disease can also affect other species of Mosquitoes. Yellow Fever annually kills 30,000 people a year and infects 200,000 people a year. Yellow Fever was the first ever human virus; discovered on the island of Barbados, in 1647.

Some symptoms of Yellow Fever are harsh fever, lost of appetite, nausea, muscle pains, mostly in back and head. In some cases, the fever keeps coming back or the body pains keep coming back, or your skin begins to turn yellow, which really makes this disease even more fatal. It can also cause kidney problems and hear failure which results in death!

The specific Epidemic I am targeting is the Yellow Fever outbreak in Barcelona, Spain, 1821. The outbreak happened through the docks coming from Cuba, apparently a brick was contagious and it got transported to people within Barcelona. It first started to affect the urban poor suburbs of Barcelona, then made its way to the center of the city. An estimated 20,000/120,000 died from the disease. That's a whole 1/6 of the FULL population of Barcelona at the time!! A quarantine was put into immediate effect, due to this epidemic. It was controlled by an estimated 15,000 soldiers! This quarantine seemed to be one of the main forms of resistance towards the disease and may be he cause of its decline. I would have suggested that the people of Barcelona use ovitraps. Ovitraps are traps that trap the eggs of insects. This idea will not only reduce mosquito populations, but it will reduce pesticides which can be harmful to humans and plants. 

Generally, a disease as fatal as yellow fever and since it can be transmitted by an insect, (mosquito) then it is definitely a potential epidemic or pandemic. So on a R Naught scale, I would say this disease is over 1. This also means that this disease has the potential to spread out of control and does not decline.

In my images you will find some patterns or epidemics I found interesting, relating to my epidemic. I used a software named GapMinder to find some relevant patterns in the way that epidemics affect other places around the same time as mine. GapMinder is a graphing program where it shows you different kinds of statistics for different countries. Something like TV sales and suicide rates. Just random things like these are examples of what you can do on GapMinder. Playing around with it, I learned about how Epidemics affected population and how drought affected population.

In the photos, you will see that I am using the software and on the software, you will see that my main out-liers are China and Indonesia in the first picture. Meaning that there was most activity in those two countries when a drought occurred. Now this is important because the holder of my disease are mosquitoes. I bet you can't guess what mosquitoes eat! They drink water, and without any water, a lot of mosquitoes die. My second image has China and India as out-liers. Now, this set of data represents populations as epidemics were happening. I found it super interesting that India and China stayed really strong in numbers, even though they are hugely populated countries.

References:
"[The "plague" of Barcelona. Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1821]." NCBI. U.S. National Library of Medicine, n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

"Gapminder." Gapminder. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Mar. 2015.

Bipolar Disorder: How Does It Feel?

For my second action project of my Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math class (STEAM), me and my peers, after learning a lot about disorders and how they affect people, had to choose our own disorders to research. Bipolar I seemed very interesting to me, it always has been. I think it's actually FASCINATING that the mind can force you into some major mood swings. If your body forces you into anything, then it must be very strong in some way. First off, what I learned about most of these disorders is that they affect some people who you would never even know suffers from that disorder. We were supposed to create an activity that helped our viewers connect with our disorder more. This is what made the project interesting!


For my simulation, I decided to use a paper ball, headphones, and a device that can play audio. Basically, you put in headphones and you will hear a man and a woman speaking through the audio. The woman will be telling you to open the paper ball and the man will be telling you to smash the paper ball. The man will be speaking very aggressively. When you open the paper ball it will say "Smash It." That is my simulation.

Why? (GQ)	What does it feel like to have Bipolar Disorder? What does it feel like to interact with a person living with Bipolar Disorder?	Time =
How?	How will I guide my classmates to experience these feelings? At the end of this lesson, students will have: Found out how it feels to have two personalities Used their inner voice to control their action Transitioned from very angry to very joyful several times Open up a balled up piece of paper with “Smash It” Listened audio screaming at them, whether digital or person	3
What? Agenda & Content	How will I guide my classmates to experience these feelings? Intro Simulation - Which criteria for this disorder need to be highlighted? Debrief Do’s and Don’ts Do’s: Listen to the audio and only the audio. Focus on your object (commonly used as paper ball) Try your hardest to get the full experience Follow Directions Dont’s: Don’t listen to any other audios while performing this simulation Please try your best to understand how my simulation relates to Bipolar I Disorder React to my simulation how you would normally react	5-6
Closure	Reflection (Writing) How might you respond differently to someone living with the disorder you studied?	4
Materials	Headphones Balled up piece of paper Device that can use headphones to play my audio

My brochure for my disease include some interesting facts about Bipolar I Disorder. It is presented below:

How Does Crohn's Disease Effect You?

In the first unit of my class Disease, we talked about how different diseases affected each part of the body. We also discussed what each part of the body is called; from Integumentary to Circulatory. We also spoke on how some diseases target certain age groups or locations. We had to conduct an interview with someone with a disease. I chose someone in my family who has Crohn's disease. This is a disease that targets, both the smaller and larger intestines. This was actually pretty difficult, since you had to get all the details right and make sure everything was precise in the drawing of the body. Although this project was really fun and informative, it was also pretty hard!

How Crohn's Affects The Body. DNR, February 13.

Crohn's disease is one of the most horrifying diseases to ever affect the digestive system. Crohn's disease is something that target the intestines and make it hard for you to release waste, and also causes abdominal pain, severe diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss, and malnutrition. When affecting the intestines, it usually slips into the bowel tissue. As my interviewee stated, Crohn's can lead to life-threatening situations. Even though I have a personal relationship with the interviewee, you have to respect the strength it takes to live under these conditions. Since the interviewee has to live under these conditions involuntarily, she can't eat what she wants to eat, she has depend on her family to watch over her children, including a newborn. In our interview, she told me about the time when she was first separated from her baby at 3 months. Her baby had to stop being nursed and live with his grandmother for two weeks. I was also affected by this and it's not easy to be told someone in your family will have to stay in the hospital for two weeks.

Since medical trainers and doctors have not fully understood what causes Crohn's disease yet, there is not a lot of treatments to pursue if you do have it. My mother has implemented another kind of treatment though, she has decided to strictly watch what she puts into her system. What she eats is key to keeping her body from having Crohn's related problems and being healthy. This disease can not be spread or passed on. It is a multi-factorial and environmental disease. Some risk factors are being at a low age or living in an industrialized country. Usually developed from the high-fat diets in more developed countries or from being younger than 30 yrs old.