Problem Statement
What problem in your community did your team try to solve? Why is this problem important to your community?
There are about three million homeless individuals in the United States. Forty-four percent are unsheltered and at risk of hypothermia during the winter. If we use easily accessible, recycled materials to build shelters for them, then the homeless people will have a warm place to sleep and it will be beneficial to the environment.
Describe what you learned in your research.
In October and November, we found out many statistics about homeless rates across America and the world. We were spending a day working in the Salvation Army homeless shelter with our school when we realized that homelessness is a problem in our community. We also found out about the conditions homeless individuals face during the cold seasons.
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| One night without a home. |
We heard about an opportunity to participate in a homelessness awareness event with Safe Harbour’s 10th annual “One Night Without a Home”. Each participant was to bring a shelter made out of trash. We decided we wanted to do it. We knew most people would use cardboard but we decided to use water bottles. We researched ways people have used water bottles to build in the past.
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| We took this picture at the landfill |
During this time we visited a local landfill. While we were there, we learned about the materials we were collecting: water bottles & newspaper. We learned that they are readily available and that the plastic bottles need to be reused because plastic does not decompose.
Working hard to build our first shelter.
It took us 40 hours to put together a structure made of water bottles and newspaper, then we took turns sleeping in it during the night. (We added the newspaper after a conversation with the high school physics teacher who advised us to minimize airflow between bottles by stuffing them with newspaper.)
Through our experience we learned that dealing with the cold is a major issue for homeless people. Spending the night on a college campus lawn when it was 31 degrees wrapped up the research portion of our project. We were ready to begin collecting data using smaller versions of our first structure.
Hypothesis
State your hypothesis and describe how it could help solve your problem.
If the temperature of (1) an uninsulated jug of water, (2) a jug of water in a "water bottle shelter" and (3) a jug of water inside a "water bottle and newspaper shelter" are compared, then the water in the third shelter will show significantly less heat loss than the water in either the uninsulated jug of water or the jug of water in the "water bottle shelter" because the third shelter's crumpled newspaper prevents airflow between the bottles making a better insulator.
A structure made out of water bottles and newspaper would be able to reduce heat loss in an effort to insulate homeless people from cold winter nights.
How did you plan to measure the validity of your hypothesis?
We planned to test three different structures:
(1) a milk jug filled with water at room temperature
(2) a milk jug filled with water at room temperature in a water bottle cylinder
(3) a milk jug filled with water at room temperature in a newspaper-stuffed water bottle cylinder.
We decided to place each in the large school refrigerator. We would measure the temperature of the water before we put it in the refrigerator and at regular intervals throughout our testing. The change in the temperature of the water will tell us wether our hypothesis is correct.
A structure made out of water bottles and newspaper would be able to reduce heat loss in an effort to insulate homeless people from cold winter nights.
How did you plan to measure the validity of your hypothesis?
We planned to test three different structures:
(1) a milk jug filled with water at room temperature
(2) a milk jug filled with water at room temperature in a water bottle cylinder
(3) a milk jug filled with water at room temperature in a newspaper-stuffed water bottle cylinder.
We decided to place each in the large school refrigerator. We would measure the temperature of the water before we put it in the refrigerator and at regular intervals throughout our testing. The change in the temperature of the water will tell us wether our hypothesis is correct.
