Thinking Systemically

My Current Understanding

My current understanding of Thinking systemically is to see a system of things interacting as a whole, but also being able to see each individual part, along with  how they interact with each other to form the whole. Thinking Systemically involves everything in existence because everything affects something else. Thinking systemically is seeing how everything happens. It is being able to understand the chain of effects that are a result of one variable, recognizing that nothing acts in isolation and seeing how everything interacts with everything else. Thinking systemically can be applied heavily in things like engineering and science.  In engineering, you have to use design thinking to figure out the best ways to create your design, how each part works individually, and how they will work together to make whatever you're designing properly functional. 

My Growth

When I first started I definitely was interested in things like engineering and science, but I had never thought about thinking systemically as an actual skill. I  would do it in simple terms to describe some scientific phenomenon or a design project I was working on. However, I never appreciated how it could be used to its fullest to optimize your understanding of the impact of that system on everything around it.

In 6th grade, I worked on my rain garden project where we did a lot of Kilo. Kilo, in Hawaiian, means to keenly observe. For me, kilo was where I dipped my feet into the pool of Thinking Systemically for the first time. It's always been a skill I have struggled with, but have greatly valued trying to improve in. I've learned to use tools of thinking systemically such as systems maps, flow charts, and diagrams; to help visualize the problem and design the solution. 

Now that I am an 8th grader I feel I have a better ability to conceptualize the world as a system as well as all of the smaller systems that make it up, right down to the atom. I have most notably grown in my ability to use Thinking Systemically to solve real world problems. For example, in EQS Clean Energy this year, my friend Avyay designed a solar powered transport aircraft. We judged a problem in the world, that was emissions from goods transportation, and we acted on that realization by designing a vehicle built to solve that problem. Thinking Systemically is very difficult. It is one of the skills I value most personally, but I think I will continue to struggle with conceptualizing the sheer vastness of the inner-workings of the universe until the day I die.  Nevertheless, I will continue to notice smaller problems, and design solutions to them by Thinking Systemically.

My Project

A project that helped me culminate my growth in Thinking Systemically was my 8th grade aquaponics system. In science, for 8th grade, we were tasked with creating a functional aquaponics system. An aquaponics system is a way of producing produce or other plants without consuming large amounts of water or having to use soil and take up large areas of land for farming. It's very space efficient and resource efficient. There are many different ways to make the system, but here's the basic principle. You will have a planting medium, usually something like clay pellets or other things that can let water through, a fish tank, and a pump. The plants are planted in the planting medium, which is contained somewhere with some sort of siphon or hole in them. The fish digest the food you feed them and poop out ammonia (which is toxic to the fish) that is consumed by bacteria and turned into nitrites which are then consumed by other bacteria to become nitrates. The water, rich with nitrates gets pumped into the planting medium. The planting medium lets the water pass through and get absorbed by the plants. The clean water is then siphoned back into the fish tank free of toxins and the cycle is repeated. . 

For our system, we began by trying to germinate some seeds. Everyone got a paper towel, some seeds, a plastic bag, a hydrogen peroxide and water solution. We soaked the paper towel in the solution and then put some seeds in the towel and folded it around the seeds and placed it in the bag. Next, we built the basic infrastructure of the system up. We placed two basins, one at a higher level than the other, and began cleaning off the clay pellets that would be used as our planting medium. We put a solar panel up, and connected it to a pump in the bottom basin. Then, we filled each basin with water and attached an irrigation line to the pump fed up to the upper tank. When all of the clay pellets were clean and ready to use, we distributed them into eight buckets, each with a bell siphon at the bottom, and fed a line from the irrigation tube into each bucket. 

When we checked back on the seeds to see if any had germinated, most of them had grown a ton of mold. This was because it was left in the shade and we hadn’t added enough peroxide that could kill off the mold so only a couple of them had germinated. We had some old food scraps that had been growing in water though so we planted that in the system and we continue to check on nitrate and nitrite levels and PH in science class to keep our system going and keep our plants growing.

How It Connects

During this project, we started by conceptualizing the system itself, which requires Thinking Systemically. We learned what an aquaponics system is, and each individual part of it as well as how they interact together to form the system. We learned how aquaponics could positively impact the world of agriculture and how that could positively impact the world by affecting our consumption of resources and therefore allowing for more cultivation. The major way we thought systemically in this project was when designing and building the system. When designing any system, Thinking Systemically is crucial. You must zoom in to fully understand each part of the aquaponics system. Like the attributes of the clay pellets, the properties and needs of the plants, or the constraints and specifications of the pump and solar panel. Then, you must zoom out, seeing how each individual part of the system is going to affect and interact with the other parts to make the thing work. 

For instance, you can use your knowledge of the grow medium to conceptualize how the pump’s specifications will allow water to cycle through the grow medium. And how that will in turn allow for plant growth and water cleanliness. Which will help the fish stay healthy and not clog the pump which would prevent water circulation and therefore the plants would die. With that, you could begin to synthesize a design, utilizing your knowledge of how everything is connected, and what patterns emerge when you change certain variables in the system. When we tested the water a week after we had set up the system, our readings said there was barely any nitrates or nitrites, and the ammonia was just building up. We never actually got to address that problem because we moved on to other projects, but if we had, here's how we could have used Thinking Systemically to solve it. 

We've already zoomed in and out of the system, so now we have to use that knowledge to seek a solution critically as well as creatively and translate our judgements into actions. We can start by getting some examples of why we could be having a nitrogen deficiency in our water. It could be because the plants are consuming too much algae, or other organisms could be stealing the nitrates and nitrites, The fish could be dead, or there aren't enough bacteria. By Thinking Systemically, you can narrow it down to a final solution based on the most impactful factors in the system.

The main variables that could be affecting the level of nitrates and nitrites are the plants, the fish, and the bacteria. Because we know that there is plenty of ammonia in the water from the fish excrement, we know that it's probably going to be either a plant or a bacteria problem, but, if you Think Systemically, it would only be a bacteria problem. You see, there are two types of bacteria, the ones that consume ammonia, and the ones that consume nitrites. If there was a plant problem, and the plants were consuming too much nitrates, we would see a lower level of ammonia because the bacteria that consume it would be using it up, and, we would see a higher level of nitrites as well, because the plants don't consume that. They would have consumed all the nitrates, but we would still have plenty of nitrites. This means, by Thinking Systemically and analyzing the problem, we know that to design our solution, we would need to introduce more beneficial bacteria to the system to start converting the ammonia. 

During this project, we ran into some problems because of people not Thinking Systemically in the most basic of ways. For example, when adding clay pellets to an ideally sterile environment, it's optimal to keep them clean. There were many instances where people dumped dirty pellets into the system not recognizing the chain of events that would occur leading to a system failure. You’re introducing foreign bacteria into the system that could compete with our beneficial bacteria which could lead to an ammonia build up meaning the death of the fish. It could clog valves and pumps preventing circulation leading to an ammonia build up and the fishes' death yet again. Overall however, this was a good place to apply my skills as a systems thinker and maybe introduce a few solutions to some world catastrophes in the process.