bus stops are hot..

so yesterday we uploaded the data that was collected from the konia bus stop and it was kind of surprising to see just how quickly the buses come and go from the stop. this data is useful but incomplete, we needed to also gather data from the paki bus stop. so i sat down at paki at around 2:25 and waited for the buses to begin loading. the first four buses were already in place when i arrived but didnt start loading until 3:30. this is good to know because it means that they arent leaving before the official end of study hall. they did not however waste time sitting around, after about a minute, each bus would leave and be replaced by another. this means that notifying konia even when buses are just leaving paki could be just enough time or possibly too late. even if we might still need to collect more information before submitting any of it, just being more aware of it is important for our project

It's my turn to be sick :( but we've got good news too

So I am super sick. 102° fever. I will not be able to come (probably) on Wednesday, so my apologies to my group as I heal up. But I would like to present some news— these are the results of Rachelle's bus timing from Friday. It shows that the buses don't take a long time to load at Konia— they load up in a minute or so (taken from when the bus passes the entrance of Konia circle). Kaneohe B was very late, as you can see, and is the main outlier in our data. If Nanakuli B is able to get to Konia and load up at 3:32, we would deduce that the bus driver is leaving Paki early, because it takes a lot longer to get up to Konia than two minutes. This may be a point to bring up to Mr. Cardenas, but for now we will just gather more data. However, Kenny also put together a survey in SurveyMonkey for students to take so we can gather more information and judge how effective our project has been. Mr. Blake is asking permission from Mrs. Martin to send a mass email to all students so we can increase participation, so we'll find out on Thursday if we can email it to everyone. :)

PROM this weekend! (yes, it's physics related)

On the way to prom...

So I didn't post yesterday because of PROM, but I've got the weekend shift and will post today. Ironically, prom has to do with our physics project— I saw Mrs. Martin there, and she stopped me, saying, "Hey, I just wanted to let you know that your group's physics proposal went really well. You guys got a lot of the work done. Good job!" I relayed to her a brief summary of our group's correspondence with Island Signal and Robert Cardenas from the Transportation Department, promising to keep her in the loop as we move this project forward. When prom ended and everyone scrambled outside to their respective vehicles, I was reminded of the very problem we were trying to create a solution for at school— most people didn't know what time and where they were being picked up, and waited as a mass in a concentrated area for their rides. Similar to the bus situation, people were waiting in a crowded place where it was easier to search for their rides, but there weren't any buses that came to pick them up, just cars, trucks, Hummers, and limos. We're going to be working on implementing our surveys and hopefully collecting data this week, so we'll see how that goes. :)

Instazzz

Big smiles for being productive!! 

We present you with good news once again! Our group used our class time super duper efficiently today and we were able to add the final touches to our detailed design. As of right now, we aren't able to fully complete our design because we need further approval from Mr. Cardenas and the transportation department. On the other hand, we did get in touch with the Island Signals Communication Company and they told us that connecting the walkie talkies with the PA system is possible, but we have to make sure transportation is able to create a relay system that pages the PA system. Our plan is still waiting on transportation, but once everything with them is finalized, our solution can begin to be put into effect. The one down side to this though is that since the PA system is supposed to be used for emergency purposes only, it will interfere with the bus announcements that go on. On the bright side, the PA system has rarely been used (if ever) by the office during the after school times so using it after school should not be much of a problem. Yay!

administration....we is boiz!

today we had our meeting with the administrators which went fairly well i think. they all seemed to agree that a system such as ours would be a nice addition to the betterment of our school. now that we have their attention we can move forward more with our plan of hopefully implementing the PA systems as a part of our solution. tomorrow another part of our project is due, and that is the detailed design. in this we need to further our estimates of cost. at this point we really just aren't completely sure about what our final costs will be because we are still waiting for more information with our correspondent in the transportation department mr. cardenas. once we have this we should have a very accurate assessment of final costs for our project. as of now the only things that we think could cost us anything would be another walkie talkie for use of someone in the office to connect them with the bus drivers.

Meeting with the people in power? ☑

(The above picture is a manilla folder that includes all the information on bus riders/schedules we've received from transportation thus far).

About two hours ago Nikki, Kenny and I had a meeting with the high school administration (whoa, scary) to propose to them our physics problem and what we see as a possible solution. It was very nice of Mr. Blake to take the time out of his busy schedule to stay with us through the meeting because being around all those important and powerful people was pretty intimidating. The meeting was short, but we were able to get our point across and let the administrators know what we are trying to do. They were very supportive and feel like what we are trying to do can really make a change in the high school. As of right now, we are waiting for an email from Mr. Cardenas to see what the transportation department has in mind with the radio system that could potentially be hooked up to the PA system. Mr. Cardenas hoped that he could test the communication networks between the bus drivers and the radio this afternoon, and we are hoping all goes well so we can win approval over the PA system :)

Approved!!!!

so today's physics class was interesting indeed. our group started out small with only 3 people in it and today one of our members decided to get sick (i think she had ebola or something like that). in any case we were quite undermanned. we did not however let this slow down the forward motion (lol get it?) of our project. we got a nice package in the mail from mr. mike hooper with whom we spoke last week, it contained quite a bit of information regarding student bus riders. from this we learned that there are about 300 students who are signed up to catch the bus home from konia every day. we also discussed today the possibility that maybe all that is really needed is a more accurate time table of bus arrivals because the one we were given said that all of the buses were to be leaving konia at 3:30 which we all know is not what happens. we are still working out what we are going to do for sure but if we are involving the p.a. systems then we will be sure to use the inner workings of them in our report due on friday. oh yeah we also discussed our project plan with kumu blake and we were approved!!!!!