“Coding is today’s language of creativity. All our children deserve a chance to become creators instead of consumers of computer science.”
-Maria Klawe
Over these last couple of weeks, I have worked on learning a bit more about my coding and how I’m going to control all of my different parts using the Arduino. We have also gotten in most of our parts and are starting to set things up. The two parts we first got in were our pH acid-base and our pH base along with our other nutrients for our lettuce.
As you can see above, we have four different nutrient types (from left to right). Calcium and magnesium; these mix with a 2:1 ratio and help the lettuce grow with reduced tip burn (where the tips of the leaves turn brown and curl in) and can help with photosynthesis. FloraGro is a mix of nutrients made to help with the growth of plant speeds and can also help with the structural growth of the lettuce. FloraMicro helps with giving the plants more nitrogen, potassium, and calcium, alongside other micronutrients. Finally, we have the FloraBloom; this one is more aimed at growing flowers or fruit because it helps quicken the production rate.
This is a photo of the pH acid and the pH base. Using these two bottles you can control the pH levels in the hydroponic system. Using the acid-base we can bring the levels down, and the base brings the levels up.
One last thing I wanted to mention was the amazing opportunity my mentor got for me. My mentor was talking to an old friend he worked alongside a couple of years ago who is now going to McGill University to study aerospace. So, while on my trip to Montreal I get to tour the engineering department and meet a future female aerospace engineer, which I think will be an excellent learning prospect for me.
Questions for this post:
- What kinds of learning opportunities does the mentor provide to expose you to new learning?
He gives me more opportunities to look at what we’re doing in a more sophisticated way and allows me to go more in-depth into some of the things we’re looking at such as the coding.
- What kinds of learning opportunities exist to reinforce new learning?
I was thinking of trying out some summer camps to reinforce my learning. Another way of doing this is by trying out some online courses to extend my existing knowledge.
- What kinds of opportunities exist that might accelerate learning?
Spending more time per week working on my project and thanks to it being a part of my science experiment I can continue to work on it next year as well.
- When you get together what do you talk about?
We tend to talk about what I’ve been working on and how I feel about everything. Before we start doing anything we set goals for what we want to do during our work. I’ve also been going over some of our long-term goals at the end of our sessions to make sure we have a plan for when we next meet.
- What is going particularly well in your mentoring relationship right now?
I feel that we have found our groove when it comes to our communication methods and our way of working together. I have also found that even with our limited amount of time we still have been able to get what we need to be done.
- What are you learning about one another?
One thing I learned about my mentor, and me is that we think very differently but we still manage to get things done. Even though sometimes it can get in the way of our communication we’ve been working on it over the past couple of months and in my opinion, our skills have improved.