Mathematics

Today is the delivery day for the Green Grids hooray! We will receive 2 X 2 Green Grids to place on the Solvent shed about four of them. We are patiently waiting for their arrival, once the grids arrive then we will be able to mount the tipping bucket rain gages and collect data from our trial green roof. We also have to finish calibrating our flow meter which Alex constructed. Again we will be traveling to the Coastal Engineering lab to use the high pressure hose this time we will be constructing a pool for the flow meter to get a better reading from the flow meter.

Mike and I spent the better part of yesterday and the rest of the week working on our poster. We are having trouble condensing all of our pictures and what we have accomplished into the poster.

Mike, Annette, and I met with the Jack Puleo, he is in charge of the Coastal Engineering Lab. He gave us the grand tour and permission to use his lab to test the drain insert created by Alex, the drain insert correlates height to flow-rate of rain. We also received permission to use the back-up for the green roofs and this is the solvent storage shed next to the Colburn building. We will be using the solvent storage shed for the prototype of the green roof until the structural engineer gives the go ahead. On Monday or Tuesday we will be receiving the about 8 grids of plant to use for the green roof, we plan to place 4 on the solvent storage shed and the remaining at the Ag-Farm.

The trip to the Delaware Memorial Bridge was out of this world. I have crossed the bridge so many times and never really though about the anchors or how far you could see from the top of the bridge that was great.

When we returned after an exciting trip I was able to finish calculating the data and created a histogram showing the total rain event in inches. Finally all the data has been summarized and summarized again so that I was able to compile the data into a few small categories with Mike’s and Jenn’s help.

Well, I thought I was finished with the statistics for the rain runoff but, it seems we may have hit a glitch and what was defined as a rain event maybe a tad off. Therefore, the numbers will need to be run again. I need to find out how much runoff is from large events and how much runoff is from small events. I also need to find out what the total runoff is for the year beginning is January 2008 and ending in January 2009 as well as the year beginning in June 2008 and ending in June 2009 so that comparisons can be made about actual rainfall. Then we will want to determine the total rainfall for each rain event and the total duration of each rain event once a rain “event” is defined. I have contacted Jerry Kauffman to find out what he considers a rain “event” to be and we will be using his definition to complete the calculations.

Annette and I worked through the Comsol Tutorial yesterday, this software is an Engineering software developed to measure heat transfer by using conduction among other engineering and physics topics. We worked through one of the portions of the tutorial that will help us look at heat transfer for the green roof. The program did all of the calculations and created graphs and visuals for us however, I tried to save the visuals so I could post them and had much trouble doing so and I lost all of the pretty pictures in transmission.

Mike and I worked on our rubric by using Google Docs on Monday, we were able to work on the document together and revise the headings and shorten the categories. We ended up with a much more manageable rubric that we will be able to use. We also think our students will be able to use this rubric when self-evaluating their work using the videos.

This morning we spent lesson planning, Mike and I came up with an idea to have our students videotape their groups working on a specific lesson. One that would be a constructivist lesson for Mike that would mean the students would design their own lab and for me that would mean that the students would have to determine how to solve a problem without my help.(Wow, that is a tough one) I will have to let the students struggle with a concept to determine how to best solve for a reasonable answer.

We decided to have 3 students per group and also to have each student have a particular job. We were bouncing some other ideas around such as switching the videotapes from math to Biology and vice-verse. Then the students would not only have the advantage of critiquing themselves but the students would have the opportunity to help other students in their learning as well.

We are still working on the rubric for the self assessment as well as the learning objectives. In addition, we need to make sure we have very direct and specific guidelines for the students using the videotapes.

We also tossed around ideas for using a Blog for review work after the Unit is complete. The students would have about 2 weeks to complete the project which would involve the students creating a worksheet, quiz, presentation, and summary of presentation to be placed on the blog. We toyed with the idea of the students including worksheets, lessons, videos, tutorials, etc. to be used for final exam review. This would be considered a semester project and completed in groups. We need to complete a guide sheet for the students as well as a rubric. We also were thinking about how to involve the other students from the class and postings but we weren’t sure how to monitor the influx of posting around final exam time.

Last but not least, we met with Annette today to discuss the Green Roofs. Mike is making progress on the grids which would house the plants and some just soil for now. The soil grids would be used to test run-off and saturation. I am still working with the Excel spread sheet and purchased the updated version last night so I can work with the extra large spread on the mac and make it smaller by using the pivot table (hopefully) then proceed on to create a chart (plot) of the data.

Enjoy your holiday and don’t eat to many hamburgers and hotdogs, save room for ice cream

I know, I know; I am a math teacher however; I did not realize I was going to be working with so many numbers this summer. But I did want to give a big shout out to Jennifer for helping me out with the “Events” Definition and defining what an event is and finding total rainfall and total duration of the rainfall. She was such a big help at setting up the macros on excel – I have no idea how to do that. She organized the spread sheet chronologically by day and time. The “Events” definition she determined was 5 minutes prior and 5 minutes after the actual time of the rain event.  Thanks again Jennifer, I don’t know if I would have been able to do it with out you.

I am still working on getting the cumulative data for the percent of rainfall for every five minute interval for years beginning June 2008 and ending May 2009 as well as January 2008 ending December 2008. Then making the comparison between the two years. I also did a little research on the SCS method and what it is; this method determines the impact of change on water resources by looking at the runoff from an area.

Jenn ordered senors for the green roof and all of the equipment came in today. We worked in the lab today, unloading the equipment and Jenn loaded the software and the sensors. Soon she will be able to install the sensors on the Chemical storage building to test the sensors and maybe need a little help.

Did you realize you could run out of space in Excel? This is on of the amazing pieces of information I have learned this past week. This is Office 2003 we are speaking of, the next task was to find computers with Office 2007 and create a spreadsheet. The task was finally accomplished, next the analysis of the data is required and I am thinking this will also require moving a few mountains or data points.

Mike Kittel and I were invited to attend the Green Roof update meeting with the the REU’s Jennifer and Alex as well as Professor Shine and Chad Nelson Assistant Professor from the School of Landscape and Design in addition to other major players in the Green Roof project. We learned about the funding issues facing the Green Roof Project as well as  the structural complications which have to be faced before the project is up and running.

As soon as Alex has the flow meter constructed, we will be testing how much water it can hold in the lab. We might need to wear our wetsuits. It should be fun to find out!

Wow, I think I was supposed to learn Biology or Ed Phych in that lecture hall back in the early 80’s. I didn’t realize 18% of the professors actually new my name in a lecture hall that held 150 students. It doesn’t surprise me that the students have their laptops and aren’t doing school work during the lecture but facebooking or something else. Imagine that; when there weren’t computers we were writing notes working or daydreaming.

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