One, Two,Three,Testing

Hello, everyone!

This week our main focus has been finishing all the interesting experiments we have been doing lately.
To refresh your memory, these tests include growing different kinds of plants in artificial soil, measuring the endurance and efficency of optical fibre and making sure we find the right balance in the gas exchange between insects and plants.
Did you know that a thick optical fibre can take more heat than a thin one? Or that potatoes can grow in a soil that is compeletely manmade?

 The team is discussing about the details of the final prototype.

Kristina is measuring the amount of light transmitting through a fibre cable.

Jesse is building an airtight chamber... And smiling at the camera.

The heat meter we used to measure the fibre's heat resistance.

We have created life!

...Well, not really. We just wanted to give you an update regarding our plant-growing experiment. The barley is already sprouting and potatoes are looking good. So far there hasn't been much difference between artificial and traditional growing environments so we'll just have to wait and see.

PS: If you are living in the Joensuu area, you might be interested to know that we are presenting our project in this year's SciFest. Hopefully we'll see you there!

There's always more to find out!

Hello, everyone!
First of all I want to thank everyone who filled out our insect-eating survey! Now we have plenty of data to analyze and use in our future concepts. We are also glad that so many of the participants are willing to try out actually eating some insects. Now the only thing we need to do is to find some nice grasshopper cookie recipies...
This week we started doing more experiments. Because we have so much to find out and only a finite amount of time we split the group into three sub-teams.
I won't tell precise details about these experiments yet but I can tell you we need an air-tight cabinet, fly maggots and some basil saplings. Sounds fun, right?
The other sub-teams' stuff is so secret even we don't know much about it. (Or then we were just too busy with our own plans to ask them. Who knows?) Hopefully things will clarify over the next week.
I hope you all have a wonderful day!

2.12. Another Q&A, yeah!

Hey!

Today we had a NASA plant physiologist, Dr. Raymond Wheeler, tell us about plant growth experiments and requirements that we should take into account while designing a new concept. We had a lot of specific questions for him considering our challenge, and his answers will help us a lot. 

Listening to Dr. Wheeler intensively.

We have to think about small-scale testing, look through previous designs and researches, before deciding anything. Luckily we have December and January for this!

Here we are, a little smarter than we were before. Can you spot all 8 bioMARTIANS that were there? ;)
Until next time, thanks for reading!