These are the notes I took before I started making the prototype to my filter.

Background:
The theory behind the studio was to make a filter that could remove salt and other contaminants from water.

Problem:
The world is heating up and drought is severely effecting people, the filter we make must clean seawater for people living on the coast.

Solution:
Use graphene, a membrane with pores small enough that only water molecules can fit through.

Process:
We started with writing pseudo code to help get the basic idea of what we wanted to simulate. The program was written in python which is a general-purpose, high-level programming language. The first feature we wanted the program to have was to create water with an amount of salinity, and pass it through a filter and be able to calculate how much salt is filtered out which we decided would be 98 percent. Other variables were added that could affect the efficiency of the filter including, pressure, volume, and area of graphene. We also added a way to know the lifetime of the filter, as the life reduces the efficiency of the filter goes down as well.

Data, Analysis, and Results:
The simulation  worked well although we did not know the qualities of graphene so the filter could not give accurate results.

Conclusion:
Although the simulation did not simulate the graphene filter, the details of graphene could be applied and the simulation would operate perfectly.

        In this studio, we were tasked with coming up with a solution to combat climate change.  There were a few different aspects that we researched in the beginning, but in the end I decided to focus on the world's water issue.  I decided to create an affordable filter that desalinates water.  I was really interested in this idea because the concept of water has always fascinated me, and I know how big of a problem it is becoming.  Before beginning to prototype the filter, I knew I wanted it to be under $10 so low income families could afford it.  I also knew that I wanted it to let out zero emissions.  With this criteria in mind, I began designing my filter.

        There are three layers to the system.  A strainer to remove the bigger clumps of things, a ceramic filter to take out the live bacteria, and a sheet of graphene to desalinate the water.  The is also a bike pump attached to the top in order to pressurize the system.  Unfortunately, the nanoporous graphene is still being designed, so I was not able to incorporate that aspect into my design.

        The filter took about a week to make.  This stems from a myriad of reasons: the parts I ordered took a long time to be delivered, things broke or did not fit, and various engineering problems arose during the building process.  In the end, however, my prototype was able to filter a dirty puddle from the street into clean water (which somebody then drank).

        After the process of building was over, I realized there are a lot of technical and mechanical components that contribute in the building of the seemingly smallest things.  Although the prototype I made does not do its purpose of desalinating water, it does clean the water.  I think this is a good first step, and when the nanoporous graphene comes into full scale production the filter will do its proper job of desalination.  For now, I am very pleased that I was able to build a relatively inexpensive prototype (I estimated it cost around $15-$20).