Day 2 Section 1

FOOD!! (I hope you enjoyed your breakfast, if you are joining us from outside HCMC) 

Problem synopsis

There is no way in the world that you could have bought livestock with you, so whatever you are going to eat, you are going to grow. You may have completed some work related to this exercise with the MIT challenge in the Autumn term, so you can bring your prior learning to this challenge, but not to worry if you have not.

You have been given some seeds from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault https://www.croptrust.org/work/svalbard-global-seed-vault/ but asked not to waste any that will not grow in your particular soil. For more information on the seed vault, have a look at https://seedvaultvirtualtour.com/

Around you, what do you see the soil to be? What sort of soils are there? What is important in a soil? https://www.rhs.org.uk/soil-composts-mulches/soil-types

As well as producing a presentation about seeds, seeds need nutrients, but not too much. We all need water, but not too much. We don't want to spend all day worrying about whether our food will survive, so we need to find a way to look after it. There are different sorts of seeds, some look very different to others, look at the coco-de-mer and the orchid seeds. (Hint. What are the biggest and smallest seeds in the world?)

Seeds can be grown in pots to begin with, to protect them from the elements and large fluctuations in temperatures, as well as plant-eating insects and other challenges. How can we grow seeds in space? Sometimes in very limited space?

(Hint https://www.nasa.gov/exploration-research-and-technology/growing-plants-in-space/ )

Hand in your seed kit token.

Challenge 1 - Can you design a plant that will survive? What soil does it need? How does it look? What grows from it? Why is it important? How can you represent this? Can you sketch it? 3D model it?

Challenge 2 - Can you design a system to automate the process of growing plants in space? What would that look like? How would you incorporate water usage, and light usage?

Challenge 3 - As a group, can you complete challenge 1 and challenge 2?

STEAM process

In your journals follow and record your progress through the problem-solving process. This will depend on what challenge you took.

Analysis - What do you understand the problem to be? What are your success criteria? What are you working towards? 

Challenge 1 - What are the problems your seed will face in the new environment?

Challenge 2 - How are you going to maximise space whilst ensuring all seeds get the right amount of nutrients, light and water? (Hint,  the less floorspace you use, the better)

Design  - sketches, either your growing area, or your seed/plant. Annotate them

Build - Make it! Test it! can you build your growing area? Or. can you represent what your seed is going to look like

Evaluation - Link back to your success criteria - did you succeed? If so, yea! If not, what else could you have done?