Design Process

When we first became a group, we brainstormed and considered many different ideas. There were severe thunderstorms in our city in July '06 that caused a lot of damage to property and many trees fell. The warning sirens did not sound even though we had severe winds (see middle picture). We realized there was a problem, but we couldn't figure out a way to fix it. Next, we considered a way to stop deer from being hit by cars. (left picture) However, we couldn't find any information on technology that could help this cause.

Remembering the miners that died in Virginia in 2005, we considered a way to stop miners from being killed. (right picture) Our group really liked this idea, but again we were not able to think of new technologies. Finally, we read an article about arsenic-contaminated water and its consequences. We read about a present technology called "LifeStraw," and found many ways to improve on modern technology. We finally settled on our topic. To complete our project, we met once a week from October to January.