In our last blog post we have to explain everything, what we’ve gone through during this long 6 months; all of the ideas, which were expressed and discussed and led us to something new, to show the whole logic and sometimes not chain of thoughts someone, who can use our progress for further researching.
In one of our first meeting with Javier he gave us an idea, the only one, which we need to cherish in the next half of the year. “Metabolic design” – that is how it sounded off. As in IAAC nothing can be without any purpose, we need to think about this topic in a context of solving global problems. After some trials to solve all of them fully, but theoretically (in particular working with genetic engineering and Gaia hypothesis), I decided to take banal treatment of water, because there was no place for theory (and later you will understand why).
As it usually happens, after an idea, a method of application goes next and here I use a knowledge from the hypothesis to see fully a structure of the Earth and its process of growing to pick out all the necessary elements for researching. One of these elements become the first process of photosynthesis 3 mln years ago.
The next step to this happy day of the end of the semester is searching a “Metabolic Pixel” or Higgs boson, so to say. For me it becomes microalgae. As it is very popular theme in the internet, you can easily find all of the information about it: history, theory, experiments and their results. Here I don’t need to invent anything new except an implementation in Valldaura lab. This place is ideal to sacrifice all of our ideas, as so many of them were rejected because of their inability to be showed in a prototype. For me it was not a big problem so I also decide to include a local restaurant in researching and put a “backbone” of my water treatment system (or just The System) in a valley between 2 hills.
The last step of the second semester was proof that everything that you’ve said before is a true and, in my case, that microalgae can clean the water, i.e. create a prototype, make an experiment and show the results to jury.
Third semester studying in IAAC was dedicated to improving existing prototype and, as a final point, creating a new structure, including all of the prototypes of all DWN group. Also it was necessary to research an implementation of our projects to Collserola Park, which has bigger scale and different features. Building of this new construction was outstanding exam for everyone who participate in that (photos of step by step building you can find in my previous posts).
The purpose of our structure is a cooking food with pretreatment of water, using of methane from compost and continuously growing plants for eating.
Some of my work you can see lower, but for full presentation go to: http://issuu.com/katelevkina/docs/_______________________pdf/1
The last photos you can see after the final presentation. So check the IAAC blog regularly and you will see everything.
Thank you and good luck!
