All Good Things Must Come To An End :(

On the way to Mrs. Martin's to thank her :)

Hopefully she likes the gift :)

From the very beginning, Rachelle, Kenneth and I worked very well together. And throughout the course of a single quarter (mere weeks, really), we became close and accumulated enough data on the Konia bus stop to make it a better place. We did not always succeed (gosh, we've been through a bajillion plans that didn't work) but we never gave up and kept moving forward with a new goal in mind. So what did go well? Team bonding, for sure. And we kept a consistent stream of communication going with adults in positions of authority; so we managed to be somewhat responsible and levelheaded in our emails. Even our final plan went quite well— we managed to work with a viable solution and came in after school to the office to announce when buses were approaching Konia.  And our surveys indicated that students thought our solution was helpful to those catching bus home; so I would commend my group for being fairly successful. What didn't go well, however, were the circumstances beyond our control. Sometimes we would send an email or make a phone call, only to not receive one in return. So we would continue to press our parties for information and correspondence in a friendly manner, but sometimes it took a little pushing to get any response. Overall, I learned that patience is a virtue I need to keep (we often had communication lapses when certain parties failed to get back to us) and that perseverance is key to success. If we had merely given up after being shot down in one of our plans, we would have never gotten ANYWHERE, and I have a feeling we would have been hit in the multiplier.
To make this a better project, I would suggest starting it the last week of fourth quarter, because we felt a little rushed at the end. Working hard from the beginning, instead of cruising for three weeks (Spring Break and all that) is probably the better way to go so that future students don't panic TOO much during the last week or so. (Not like we were panicking much.) But it would help us manage our time better.
Although this was supposed to be a PHYSICS project, it didn't really feel like one. I mean, we found a problem that was solved with the help of physics (sound waves and frequencies on the radio), but it didn't really feel like we were doing science. It felt more like a feel-good "help Pauahi" project, not a science project. But I liked it better that way; had Mr. Blake forced us to incorporate lots and lots of science rather than coming into our own as a student scientist, I think we wouldn't have been as enthused.
Overall, this project was a great way to end my year of physics and I would definitely recommend this to other classes. Plus, the added bonus of NOT having a final physics test was nice. :)

And our journey comes to a end.. :')

As we bring an end to the fourth quarter, we also bring an end to our Ho'oulu ia Kamehameha physics project. Although I'm happy that this project is done and I feel like we did well, it's a bittersweet feeling to be leaving my group. We've worked so well together throughout this entire quarter and I'm so fortunate to call them my group members.

From day one I had a feeling that our group would do well. I'm not trying to sound conceited or anything, but just by looking at my partners, I knew that they were people who wanted to do well too. The major thing that went well in this project was spreading out the work evenly. Our group kept on task and made sure to turn everything in on time; this allowed us to not stress one bit. We also used our time wisely both in and out of class, so we didn't have to commit too much time outside of the classroom towards this project. Well, of course, besides going to the office everyday after school :P

Out of everything we did and went through during the course of this project, I think the only thing that didn't go as planned was the communication. This was a factor beyond our control and was due to the fact that we were working with people who had way more power than us. This may have delayed our project just a tad bit, but in the end it didn't hurt us because we ended up getting on project done.

From this project I learned a lot about teamwork. Working in groups isn't always going to be as easy as the group I was put in this time. I also learned the value of patience...especially when you're relying on other people. Since we wouldn't be able to execute this project in its entirety alone, we had to make sure that we had support from the people who would allow us to make it happen. These people (like Mrs. Martin and Mr. Cardenas) already have busy schedules and other duties they're committed too, so we have to understand that our project is not the first thing on their "to-do" list. Patience is a good trait to have even later on in life......especially when we all start to have kids.

I don't feel there's really anything that needs to be changed about this project to make it a better activity because there's not really any rules that you need to follow. I mean, the only rule is to relate it to physic's somehow. Besides that, you have all the freedom in the world to solve whatever problem you see fit.

I can honestly say, I didn't think we were doing science at any time during this project. Okay, well besides the fact that we walked into a science classroom every time we had class, we weren't literally learning about just science. I think the only time I felt we were doing science was when we were writing how our project connects to physics in our report.

All in all, this was a fun project and very enjoyable :)

auuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu PAU!!

ahhh the journey is finally nearing its close. it has been quite interesting to learn so much about the processes of life that are not so streamlined as we would hope them to be.  we learned all about the going ons of adults at our school which is not something that we would have been able to experience in any other way than by doing this project. i honestly think that there is great value for us in having done this project because this school is supposed to be preparing us for success in our future lives so that we can progress to the best of our abilities. having had this experience puts us ahead of the game when we graduate because we now have a much better grasp of how the process of working with others and with problem solving will benefit us in the future. somethings that went very well for us in this project is that right off the bat i believe we were given the best group members possible. we worked together flawlessly in dividing up the work between each other evenly and then all following through with completing our parts efficiently and timely. also we were able to come up with a problem to solve rather quickly which gave us the most possible time to brainstorm different ideas for solving it and to work on implementing our project and working out the kinks in it. some things that did not go quite as planned were the speed of responses from people who were helping us. we naiively expected instant responses but that is just ridiculous of us to have done because we were working with people who had lives outside of our projects and definitely more important things to be worrying about. if we were able to change this activity to make it better i would say that maybe forcing students to move along a little bit more might help because i dont think that any of us had much of an idea of what we were getting into when we began this project. i realize that the whole point of the project was for us to figure this all out on our own as much as possible but yeah thats really all i can think of because this was a very good project in my opinion. unfortunately i dont not honestly think that i was thinking much about physics for the most part during this project, it was more of a life lesson than anything else. it could be changed in the future to require a direct relation to physics but i dont think that it would be necessary. 

this was an awesome group and i am very grateful for their work in this project as well as all the help of the people who helped us out along the way. mahalo everyone!!!

The Penultimate Post :(

The word 'penultimate', in case you didn't know, means 'next-to-last', and this is the second to last post for this physics blog. I don't know if I feel happy, sad or relieved... I guess I'm a mix of both, considering how much stock Kenny, Rachelle and I have put into our Ho'oulu iä Kamehameha Project. As Rachelle remarked in a previous post, we did quite well during our presentation. We showed up to Konia 108-109, smartly dressed, and shared our Prezi with a room of our peers. I think we managed to make our presentation both interesting and fun with some well placed humorous remarks and an enlightening presentation. We've come so far— this confident trio of presenters was not present on the first day of fourth quarter. Now we've only got two days of class left; and we've got to make the best of them. We've learned so much about group communication and how many times plans don't always work out; even though our project wasn't perfect, we did make the best of it, and I think we did quite well considering the circumstances. :)

We. Are. Done!!!!....(son)...lol

Ohmygosh! The day has finally come where we finished our physic's presentation! Good job to all of the groups who presented tonight, everyone did a fantastic job! We can finally say that we are done with physics. You may say we still have our final report due; yes that's true, BUT our group finished it already! Weeeeee :) Here's a picture of us presenting tonight:

Surprisingly, our group wasn't that nervous about going up there to present. Surprisingly, I wasn't nervous...and it's funny because I usually get nervous having to talk in front of just a speech class, let alone a room full of students, adults and teachers. I really want to thank my entire group for always willing to go the "extra mile" because throughout this project I've learned a lot about hard work and what it takes to actually get things done. We are very glad this project is done, and honestly I feel our group did a pretty respectable job up there. We were all dressed in our "formal" attire and opted to show enthusiasm for our project. Hopefully people liked our presentation! Adding in the little act to demonstrate how we used the PA system was a last minute decision (like literally last minute) because our youtube link wasn't working, but we really enjoyed it! We thought that it was a good break from just talking at our audience. Plus, people were laughing so I think that means they liked it :P

We would also like to go ahead and thank Mr. Hooper (picture of our group with him above) for showing his support and coming to watch our presentation. Sadly, he walked in literally seconds after we finished, BUT it's the thought that counts :)

To sum things all up, today was a great day! It might've been a wee bit stressful, but definitely well worth it :) good job everyone!!

ahhh it seems like just yesterday we had 54 days do complete our project..

unfortunately all that time has left us forever and we will never get it back. luckily for us, we spent that time quite efficiently in my opinion! this past quarter has been pretty intense and we had a lot of work on our plate but we managed to complete something pretty great! we just got back the results of our post survey, and as it turns out about 80% of students would like to see the announcements of buses continued next year! that is amazing for us because we know we have all worked very hard on this and are pleased with ourselves for what we have accomplished but it is a whole nother thing to have the actual student body appreciate what we have worked on. it feels quite good to be almost done....even though tomorrow is the "big day" (even though every night seemed like it was the hardest) i think that we are fairly well prepared and will do fine. i am confident in our group and that we will be able to perform well for our guests and classmates (and our class grade!). just a few more grades going into that book and we cant afford to mess up now! good luck to us and all of the other groups tomorrow!

We managed!....even with 33% of our group not here!

To start this blogpost off...
Dear Nikki,
I hope you get well soon! Finals are coming up, just hang in there for one more week! :)
Love, Rachelle & Kenneth
But yes, as you can see, Nikki is sick and was absent during our class yesterday. On the other hand...this did not stop us from being productive! As Kenny explained in the previous blogpost, we used class time wisely and put up our signs. THIS, blogpost is going to be about our 2nd test run for the bus announcements that Rachelle and Kenny did Tuesday afternoon. Even though we only had two people, we were able to manage decently.

(I was the new Kenneth and listened in on the transportation radio):

We had a rough start though; we didn't know how to actually get the PA system to work in the beginning because we forgot to press "#". This delayed our announcements a little and we missed announcements for the first 3 buses. Secondly, Ms. Martin came back into her office halfway at about 3:45 and let us know that we need to be a bit more "lively". She was in a meeting with Mr. Blake for a possible new teacher and I think the bus announcements were a little disruptive to their meeting. There were also a few more combinations yesterday, which should've actually helped people who were catching those buses.
Although we had to face some difficulties, they were minor and we were able to push through! Can't wait to see what will happen this afternoon!

our project is off the wall!!! ...well actually our signs are ON the wall!

today in class we went on an excursion to the smith office (i swear we've been in there more than in the classroom this quarter). we went in firstly to have Ms. Martin approve our signs to be put up, and secondly to have Ms. Akiona work with us to rearrange the bulletin board so that we could fit our (crooked) bus line up along side all of the other information on the board. it took some work and intense creative thought but eventually we found a pattern that we could fit all of the necessary signage. 

this sign wasn't a part of our original project plan but we decided that it would be a nice addition for people to know the order in which their buses are to arrive. thats why our sign isnt really very fancy but it still gets the job done. we hope that lots of people will be able to view our sign and be helped by knowing when their bus will come in relation to the other buses.

First Test Trial (a great start)

Learning to work the PA system

Our sweet setup

Today was a good day; we managed to start our project trial right on time at 3:30. We had a quick crash course from Mrs. Martin ("Okay guys, press PAGE, then 1, then 19, then #") on how to work the PA system, then we switched on the walkie-talkie radio, listening to Mr. Cardenas remind the drivers to call out their route when they left for Konia. Although it took a couple of runs to get our announcements running smoothly (note to self: wait until the beeping over the PA system stops before you announce anything), we managed to get a system in working order by the time Mililani B/C was announced over the walkie-talkie. Rachelle documented our trial, noting what was helpful and what was not, and went outside to get feedback. Kenny helped me inside, listening carefully to the frequency and letting me know what buses were on their way. And I announced the buses over the PA system. We were quite successful, I think, because people asked later if the announcements were part of a physics project and a couple of people noted that the announcements came in loud and clear through the classrooms. The one hitch we had was that people at the bus stop itself were unable to hear the announcements as clearly because of the existing noise and the openness of the bus stop itself. Although that is an unfortunate and  discouraging turn, we still are helping people and still helping to fix a problem that needed to be solved, so we'll see at our next trial run (tomorrow). Here's to Day 2!

Counting down the days...

I'm starting to feel the stress... just a little.

With less than two weeks left, we are really in the "crunch zone." As Rachelle and Kenny have stated in previous posts, we have had many trials and tribulations in preparing and designing a solution to our problem. We've gone through Plan A-Z and we're still coming back for more. Although we may not be successful in the end, we are still going ahead with this project and we'll keep moving forward. Tomorrow we are supposed to meet with Mrs. Martin and learn how to work the PA system and test out the walkie-talkie relay system that we proposed to Mr. Cardenas last Thursday. I really hope this system works— we've already gone through so many ideas and proposals— but we'll see; I'm sure everything will work out. We're at the last leg of our mini-marathon and we're just clearing the home stretch. A lot of our problems were from logistics and even physics— in figuring out how to work the PA system, the walkie talkie system, and the reality of the difficulties of communication, we've learned so much that we would have never expected to learn before. I'm so happy that we're almost done and we've been working hard. Good job guys! :)

It's getting close to the end!

Sorry this is a late blogpost for Friday because I (Rachelle) was supposed to post this Friday. Mehd I'm so angry I even had everything set up and everything I just didn't post it to the blog :( oh wells, darn it, I'm so sorry! But on Friday Nikki and I weren't able to be in class because I had the AP U.S. History exam and Nikki had states for track. (Dear Nikki, I hope everything went well!! Let us know how it went:) So, as you can tell from the picture Kenny was left alone in class. We are very sorry Kenneth! But it wasn't a wasted class period even though 2/3 of our group was not present. The previous day we were able to make bus arrival signs to put on the Smith bulletin board, warning people the order of their buses. These were to be taken to the office today by Kenneth to get approval from Ms. Martin. I'm sure all went well and I can't wait to see how everything is going to work out this week!

We almost have deployment!!

(sorry this is late!!!!)

so yesterday we had yet another meeting with ms. martin, she made a call for us to mr. cardenas. we had a talk with him confirming what the people from island signal told him. he told us that we need to either put a box with a battery and speaker in the hallway somewhere or we would have to just run a speaker from the office to somewhere else in order to announce the buses. ms martin said that this was a cost that was unecessary because she didnt want to spend money on something that could possibly be in effect for only a couple of weeks. instead we have a new plan, on monday mr cardenas will have the bus drivers announce their passing of akahi over the radio. we were given a radio in order to listen in on this and then we will be able to relay this to the students via the PA system. if we are able to, we will continue this for the next week or so. this will be our official deployment of our project.

Never give up, never surrender!

Today during homeroom our group had another meeting with Mrs. Martin just to clear things up about what was going to be implemented, if something were to be implemented at all. As Kenny explained in the previous blogpost, we were hoping to go with the first option Mr. Cardenas offered, but after taking a second look at Mr. Cardernas' email, we all (Mrs. Martin and our group) came to the conclusion that implementing the radio by the due date, or even by the end of the year, would be nearly impossible. First off, the labor costs to have someone install this would go beyond our $100 budget. Secondly, to install things, work permits have to be sent in 2 weeks before the expected installation date. In two weeks let's see....it'll be summer! Haha, but in all serious-ness, today brought us to the end of the radio road. But! You know what? We're not gonna give up there! Just because what we planned for in our proposal and detailed design didn't work, doesn't mean we're not gonna either!

From this we've developed a new plan...a new PLAN A :) So, with this idea, we plan to manually make the bus announcements ourselves using our own man-power. It'll work because someone will be down at Paki letting the two other group members at the top which buses are coming up, and these two group members will make the announcements over the PA system themselves. Even though our first plan wasn't able to be followed through...we will NEVER give up and NEVER surrender!

elima hou la!

not much time left!

yesterday mr. cardenas met with a representative from island signal to discuss how to go about linking the PA and radio systems together. aparently the people at island signal thought that we had a different type of system implemented at our school (a stand alone system) when we infact have a system that is linked through the phone systems. this complicates things a little bit but is fixable by two possible methods that mr. cardenas explain to us via email. the first is to connect the radio from the transportation department to a completely separate speaker which would be placed somewhere in konia circle. the second solution is a little bit fuzzy to me but i think it means this, we would mount a box in the hallway of konia somewhere with a power source and the radio in it. there would also be a speaker connected to the radio most likely wired to outside of the box. we would simply open the box after school and turn on the radio so that it would transmit to the speaker and then turn it off later on. both of the solutions are simple sounding but will require a lot of work if we are to complete them on time. we have a meeting tomorrow with ms. martin to hopefully clear up some of the confusion that we have and to decide and move forward with which ever solution we choose to go with.

Island Signal

Courtesy of http://www.fcs.com/index.php?h=Voip

Today I received an email from Mr. Cardenas informing our group that he was meeting someone from Island Signal at Smith Office to discuss the workings of the PA system in regards to our transportation project. We did not attend, but  I also created (based on Rachelle's charts) a bus timetable prototype that we sent to Mrs. Martin and Mr. Cardenas to get their feedback. Mr. Cardenas felt that we should remove the times and keep it basic, leaving just the order of the buses so that kids know the order, but I think perpetual bus riders will know what order their bus generally comes in because they've ridden it for so long, so the times are more important to list. But we will fix that and generally make it better and hopefully tomorrow will yield important and eventful results. We are hoping that we will be instructed on how to work the PA system tomorrow and we will do a test run.

Ahead But Behind O.o

On the plus side, we're moving forward and we're getting our oral presentation as well as our final report in order for May 18th. We also had a successful meeting (as outlined by Rachelle in the previous post) on Friday, where we met and talked with Mrs. Martin and Robert Cardenas for the first time. He sent me a follow up email today in response to the one I sent him on Friday regarding our meeting and our plans for this week, noting that he had contacted Island Signal and someone would come out (possibly) tomorrow, but they would confirm...tomorrow. BUT-- we are planning to do some test runs this week, and we'll (hopefully) be talking to Mrs. Martin regarding this tomorrow. Although we didn't get our prototype deployed by Friday as we had hoped, we're still going strong and we're definitely going to finish off this quarter as CHAMPS :))

We're on track..just not 100% on time

Picture of Nikki and I's readmit after having our meeting at the office

Today was a very VeRy VERY productive day because we were finally to have the meeting with both Mrs. Martin and Mr. Cardenas in person. Previous to this we've only been conducting emails, which were useful, but harder to get communication flowing because responses on-time weren't always guaranteed. At the beginning of meeting we went over what our plan was to refresh everyone's memory and we told Mrs. Martin and Mr. Cardenas what we hoped to have implemented by our due date. Sadly, we found that it's not physically possible to install the radio to the PA system by today (the due date), but they said we could have a dry-run Monday afternoon. Although today is supposed to be the date that our prototype is up and running, we're just glad we've cleared up the communication problem and have a plan worked out. We're very excited to see how everything will come together Monday and we'll see if our solution is doable!

WAN MOA DEI!!!!!

this is our prezi that we are working on for our final presentation. today we spent some time working on it as well as deciding what attire we are going to wear. i think we are just gonna go for broke on it and wear super fancy because it is basically free pointage.

so today is the day before our prototype must be up and running (just like the freshmen and sophomores tomorrow!) and we still haven't corresponded with mr. Cardenas (FINALLY figured out how to pronounce that btw) about setting up a meeting with him and Ms. Martin. this being kind of an issue, our group took a field trip down to smith office and ms. Martin set up a meeting for us with herself and Mr. Cardenas tomorrow at 10:16 during our physics period. unfortunately this means that our entire group will be unable to take the test tomorrow but we will be sure to make it up promptly! well if we are unable to acquire a radio by tomorrow for use in our prototype, we will have to do this in a slightly more difficult way...with rachelle down at paki telling me via cellphone when each bus is leaving, and i will have to say it over the PA system up at konia. tomorrow has a lot in store for us and we are very excited! Also, good luck to Nikki and the other members of our track team tomorrow at their meet! DO WORK!!! (that is how it is physics related).

Dos días más!

For those of you who don't speak Spanish, the title of this blogpost means "2 more days!" (as in 2 more days till our prototype is created and deployed). Why did I write it in Spanish? Lol because I'm in Spanish class right now and since I'm being so studious I want to be inspired by the Spanish language. WELL, anyways we're now down to crunch time...and we still haven't got further contact from Mr. Cardenas! I mean we've been able to get in touch with him, but nothing has really changed. Not to say that we're stressing big time now, but we somehow need to figure out a way to get our prototype out there in less than 48 hours! I have confidence that by the time it's due we'll have something to present...we just need to keep working hard.

SURVEY SURVEY SURVEY!!!!

(some of the responses we have gotten in our survey)

I posted the link for our survey on the class of 2013 facebook page a couple of days ago and asked our classmates to take it. that yielded fair results with statistics that were helpful. yesterday however, Charlene Hara sent out a mass email to all of the Kamehameha High School asking them to take our survey. this was kind of excessive and not really what we wanted to happen anyway. we originally only wanted to survey the sophomores and juniors because next year they would be the only ones who would be using the konia bus stop and thus be affected by our project. this mass email resulted in a total of 393 people taking our survey. this would be great if all of these people were juniors and sophomores but they arent. this changed our data for our first two questions quite a bit, however the interesting thing is that most people still think that it would be a good idea for us to announce the bus' arrival over the PA system. we have had quite a few responses stating that the terminal bus in particular needs to be announced because that one is very inconsistent and students using it have expressed a desire to be able to study for as long as they can.