Showroom

We had made a poster draft in week 13 that was alright, although it had a lot of written content and not so much visualization. When we showed it to our tutor teacher he told us It would be better if it were more visual than informative. We decided to do more of an advertisement poster and have the technical content on a slide show for the showroom. So we re-did the whole poster. 

We used an online design tool that was easy to use since it had plenty of templates. However, we were pretty picky with where to have the text and logos and the program did not co-operate very well with our special wishes. After many hours of battling with it we managed to get a really good looking poster that I think we all are proud of.  

Sadly the poster was not everything we needed for the showroom. We had to make a slide show of our test results, buy candy for the table, prepare gravel samples for the showroom visitor to look at and finalize the pitch. Luckily we had a pretty good pitch already, so we only needed updated the information and work a little bit on the structure of the speech. 

The day of the showroom we came early to school to prepare everything. We set up our table in the spot selected for us, installed the monitor and put the candy in a bowl, hung the poster and waited. Jouni presented our project to the jury and he did a phenomenal job. They were very impressed, sadly there were so many good project presentations that we did not win. Our PO also came to have a look and he seemed very satisfied. In all we are very pleased with our showroom presentation, and we hope to keep up the good work until the end of the project. 

Light Crushed Aggregate showroom poster

Week 12 and 13 - The last chemical tests and getting ready for showroom

In week 12 we conducted the last chemical tests. As I mentioned previously, we stumbled into some problems with the test methods and therefore we did some calculations and re-did the tests with new dilutions and standard curves. The test results differed somewhat from the earlier results, however, we can now make conclusions from the tests. We also took microscopic pictures of the gravel, which was a bit frustrating, since the school's camera's battery was empty. But luckily batteries can be re-loaded and after that we managed to get some really cool pictures that i will post on the blog for you to see.

In week 13 we started reporting a little but focused more on the poster since the showroom is coming up in week 16.

Chemical tests week 9-11

When the spring break or, as we call it in Finland, winter/skiing holiday was over we started off our working by having a meeting with Ville from Renotech. He wanted to go through some possible logistics studies with us, more info about the meeting in a later post. A part of our group also attended a pitch workshop as a part of the course. The workshop was held by other students and they taught us about what a good pitch is like and everything that is important to focus on during a pitch. We also held our own practice pitches. It was an pretty awkward, funny but eye-opening workshop. None of us are experts at pitching, but with a little more practice we will manage well on the day of the Showroom.

We continued with the lab work and stumbled on a few problems, first the absorbance's were suspicious and when we did the phosphorous solutions they turned very dark blue and the standard had to be diluted a lot before it gave us any realistic results. We realized we probably had some problems with the calculations and did some re-calculations. This resulted in the next test being way too diluted. We had a PO meeting where we decided on the upcoming schedule and agreed on having the a poster with results done by the end of the month, which gives us two weeks to figure out our problems. In other words, we have a lot of work ahead of us. We will let you know how it goes!

Physical tests: Weeks 5-9

As referred in the earlier posts, we have decided to split the group in two, in order to work more efficiently. We have also decided that each group will write their own blog posts from this moment on.

Just to summarize a couple of general things regarding the whole group, during this spring we have so far for example filmed a pitching video and participated the poster workshop. Today, we also had a meeting with another member from Renotech in addition to our PO, and he is going to help us with the project from now on as well.

The physical tests we started on Friday (on week 5) by sieving and separation of the batches. At the end of the day the separated particles were put into an incubator to get rid of the moisture. After the incubator, the particles were put into an exsiccator.

From Thursday to Friday (on week 6) we conducted a water absorption test. On Thursday, the granulates from each badge were measured into decanters with RO-water in them. Decanters were covered with parafilm to protect the samples from external factors and to control water evaporation. On Friday, after the granulates had been soaked for 24 hours, the water was sieved out and the granulates were weighed.

On Friday (on week 7) we executed the true density test by weighing the granulates from each badge, and then crushing them to powders. Powders were then weighed again into measuring glasses, and RO-water was added to each glass to determinate the densities.

Today, after the skiing holiday, we continued with the bulk density test. Granulates from each badge were added into measuring glasses with RO-water in them, and the volumes were determined. After that, the bulk densities were calculated according to relevant formula.

The physical tests will continue in March.

Starting experiment

We started our experiment work last week. We divided our group into a physical test team and a chemical test team in order to carry out the experiment efficiently. At last week we checked the change of pH concentration through the reaction of concrete using nitration solution.

On this week, Another experiment using phosphate started. Jouni prepared solutions and standards on monday. we started test on tuesday. Work solutions were made by adding various solutions with filtered samples. These samples were heated on autoclave at 120 Celsius under 1 bar pressure for 30 minutes. After heating, we made some samples with water and work solutions that has different concentrations with molybdenum solution for comparison, and we could see some samples turning blue. was added to the samples prepared at different concentrations to confirm that the color changed to blue. The absorbance of the solution was measured using a spectrophotometer, and a value similar to that of the standard was observed in the fly ash.

We will test the samples with another methods (Chemical test and physical test both).

Week 56

Past week was full of planning, brainstorming and preparations. One of the last more theoretical weeks before our experimental work will fully begin.

We have drafted the procedures for new physical test that our PO requested in addition to the chemical and physical analysis already thought-out and scheduled. We have also ordered reagents necessary to carry out the analysis of the former.

This week we also held the first PO meeting this year. On it our newest team memebers had the chance of meeting and introducing themselves to the PO.

We are beyond excited to start our experiments and put our weeks of planning to the test!

Kick off for year 2019

The first week of the year started with a few hour meeting amongst the group members and we started to plan the next weeks schedule. On  that same day our PO also brought us the first soil samples for us to see and sieve as we needed bigger sized granulates separated from the soil dust.
On friday our newest members joined our group and we introdused our progress so far towards the project to them.
After introductions were made and the laboratory safety test was succesfull our group went to the lab and sieved the samples and layed them to water to wait for next weeks pH-measurements.