Category Archives: Temporary Expert
Algae Fountain
This video demonstrates the development and potential use of the fountain, as well as show the final result. Motivation and goals In reflecting on my motivations for creating a fountain, I went back through my documentation this semester and found a question from a long time ago that I thought encapsulated my thread of thinking the past few weeks: Can I […]
Growing algae in diluted urine & Final project
Our Spirulina has really proliferated which presents a new problem: how to harvest it? So I’ve been figuring out how much and how best to extract the biomass. Chlorella seems much more difficult to harvest. I continued to research microalgae growth with urine (citations updated) and fertilized a batch of algae with urine. Spirulina grows in […]
Microvideo & project progress
Microcinema I’ve been experimenting with creating a microscope that allows me to easily take video. The nice thing about using a piCam is I know it’s easily programmable. Although for my purposes the same functionality might be available for a cheap usb webcam. I’ve been researching tools others have used to do similar things, and found […]
Final project progress update
Revisiting micro green composites Something unexpected this week was realizing my micro greens are dying. I was thinking a lot about apoptosis, and how death is necessary for a healthy ecosystem, to allow other living things to thrive. I recreated some of the composites I made when my micro greens were growing now that they are […]
Algae growth progress: bioreactor plans
Maintaining a culture This week we learned a lot about maintaining algae cultures in their appropriate medium (we are maintaining a google doc to collaborate and maintain these and other resources). We had a number of practical questions about building a bioreactor to grow our algae, and about whether there were real or just semantic differences […]
Project proposal progress & 360 images
Our algae cultures arrived! The instructions indicated that the tubes should be slightly unscrewed to allow gas exchange, that they should be kept in light but not direct sunlight, and at room temperature. I sort of panicked but from what I’ve read, it seems like cultures like this are somewhat resilient. The detailed advice online […]
Macrophotography & algae updates
Daily practice: macrophotography The daily task I chose was macrophotography which utilizes the amplification strategy, very literally. I did my best photographing my growing plants with a magnifying lens that was apparently left on the junk shelf. I don’t even know if I’m calling this the right thing because I know so little about photography… […]
Algae
Understanding algae My inquiries landed me on algae-based solution, but I and Marina (who rightly pointed this out after my presentation) wondered “what are the differences between algae and micro algae, run-off algae species and the ones we eat in smoothies?” There are thousands of kinds of algae, and cyanobacteria, green-blue, and red algae are […]
Limits to Growth Proposal: Algae Brewer
Updates I met with NYU professor David Kanter last week and had a very helpful discussion. His work is focused on the nitrogen cycle, but nitrogen and phosphorus have a close relationship given their role as fertilizers. One important difference is nitrogen is renewable and phosphorus is not. He pointed me to the Planetary Boundaries update supplementary materials […]
Proposal & Ad
Updates This week I learned about the green revolution, which increased world-wide food production and fed masses of people, but resulted in inefficiencies to the extent that more energy is being used to produce food than its output. I also learned about the haber-bosch process–its use in industry is responsible for massive amounts of ‘nitrogen fixation.’ […]