Water is much more than you think, and yet here we are, wasting it like it's nothing. Do you understand how valuable water is to survival, to life? Without water, there are no humans, no animals, no life, no EARTH. Water is everything, and we are destroying the one essential tool we absolutely cannot replace. Yet, why is it that many of us aren't concerned with the drought?! The simple yet cruel answer is that it didn't affect us yet. Here in Los Angeles, we all learned and heard about droughts all over the world, but have we experienced the affects of it yet? No, we haven't. That's why we should start taking the steps now. "But if we're not affected yet, why bother?" Well, if we don't start now, who knows when it'll get worse and when we'll have to ration our water? Instead of enjoying the water you have while you can, it's a smarter option to consider working as a community to preserve water. You can't wait years to do it just because it doesn't feel like much is happening. You need to start now. Every single day, we are killing the environment, and you won't believe the simple reason why.
Water is LIFE, Water is EVERYTHING
For instance, an average person takes up 17 GALLONS of water every time they shower, ONCE. Now imagine a family taking showers with an average of 17 GALLONS per person. Then, imagine a class of 30 students and then a whole school. Next, imagine a whole city, filled with schools. That's quite a lot isn't it? But that isn't even close to the scale compared worldwide. So that led me to think "Oh, if that's how much water we are using, we should try different ways to shower, including the bucket challenge." The bucket challenge is just taking a shower with a 5 gallon bucket, and timing yourself to see how much water flows per minute.
Shower Times
10/8/16
Today I took a shower with a bucket and timed how long it took for the shower hose to fill up an entire 5 gallon bucket. Amazingly, it only took around 1.40 minutes! That's around 2.5 gallons of water per minute we're wasting, and yet we take 10-30 minute showers! So when you're taking a shower, please keep in mind that in some countries, they have to use buckets to shower everyday, so we shouldn't go wasting water like that.
10/9/16
This time, I tried putting the shower hose in the bucket again and got 1:46 minutes before it filled up. Since I use buckets anyways for my daily shower, I can't really compare my habits with the shower hose ones. My parents came from Vietnam, so they were used to saving water through this and taught me this method of saving water.
10/10/16
So today, I actually did the experiment again and got close results to 1:40. I had extra water in my bucket before, so I guess it wasn't an accurate time, but I didn't want to waste any water, so I just recorded the time anyways.
There's not much to change in my showering habits since I already use buckets to shower, but someday, I will try showering with the hose once in a while.
Since I use buckets anyways, This is just a graph to help you better understand how much water I'm using per day, which is only 5 gallons per bucket shower. As you can see, the line is horizontal on 5, meaning there is not change. No matter how long my shower takes, it only uses 5 gallons, so that's what the x represents.
#SaveTheDrop
Right now, we are working on a project to create or refine a model that reduces water usage, loss (prevent evaporation) or waste (dripping) to determine which is most effective in addressing the effects of the drought in our Cypress Park community. In order to do that, we are going to research about worldwide solutions and how to apply those to our community. Self awareness of the drought isn't enough, so the goal of this project is to create a physical model of the solution and make a presentation/video about how it works and why should the community utilize it. Our Project is called MET Sprinkler System and it's a refined sprinkler system that uses moisture sensors to save more water. We built our physical model using the VEX kit, so it might look complicated, but it's actually easy to understand.
You see, on the left side , that is a picture of our physical model. it looks kind of complicated with all the wires everywhere, but they're just for shutting off the water for our sprinkler head. I'll go into depth about out project in a bit, but first, I want to show you the right side picture. That picture was drawn by one of my group members, Michael, and I would like to thank him for this wonderful design that fully depicts what our model was supposed to represent.
Anyways, this is how our model works. As soon as we turn on the on-Bumper, the sprinkler will turn on. It will keep spraying water until any of the limit switches on that side is pushed down, which then stops the sprinkler that the limit switch was connected to. In other words, there are 2 sides in our model. The left side and the right side. Each of the sides have their own motor and 2 limit switches. Therefore, if the limit switches are pushed down due to moisture, only that side's sprinkler would go off, not the other side. If you're wondering what that half cut water bottle is doing there, it's just a representation of water moisture, so if I pour water in it, the bottle would move down, pressing the limit switch to shut off the sprinkler. Our sprinkler heads move in a pattern that stops and moves at a speed of 0.5 until it reaches 360 degrees and repeats over and over until turned off with an off-Bumper or limit switch.