Desal Prize, High School Project
The daily procedure consisted of measuring pH, DO, temperature, and electrical conductivity of both the big tank that consisted of 13 Mozambique Tilapia and the experimental tank that consisted of 2 Mozambique Tilapia. The data collection was recorded over a 28 day period. The equipment used includes a PASCO system to measure electrical conductivity. Vernier Software was used to record temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen. At first, pH strips was used to measure the pH of the big tank and experiment because the pH sensor still needed to be properly prepared and calibrated. Once the pH sensor was ready, which was around Day 10 of data collection, it was ready to be used with the Vernier equipment. The set conditions for the big tank includes a constant 75-80℉ by two heaters, 2 bubble bars (bubbler), 1 air stone (bubbler), and liquid dechlorinator for tap water for a 60 gallon tank. The experimental tank was set at a constant 70-75℉ by one heater, had one air stone, and liquid dechlorinator for tap water for 8L. Each probe was allowed to settle in the BT water or experimental water for 2 minutes after calibration. Each data measurement was collected over a span of 60 or more seconds and the average was inputted into a graph as the value for that day.
In terms of the programming part of this project, once data collection is completed every week, the files are then exported as .dat files, originally .txt files, and then implemented through the File class. Once the file is successfully imported into the program, the contents of the file are converted into a String format and then a one-dimensional array through the split method. Once the array is created, the array is then transferred to an arraylist for easier data manipulation. Once the arraylist is created, the program gets the sum of all the values in the arraylist and then is divided by the total size of the arraylist. Then the average is rounded to the nearest hundredths, tenths for temperature, by using the DecimalFormat class. Once the average is rounded, it’s recorded into an overall arraylist for each day, whether it’s for the big tank or the experiment. Then by using the FileWriter class, all of the arraylist values are recorded into a .txt file based on it’s phase and the environment. Also, the data was split into three phases. Phase one was data collected in the large fish tank with no chemicals present. Phase 2 was the data collected in the experimental tank with an increase of the brine concentrations over time. Phase 3 was the data collected when the brine concentrations were added to the large fish tank at a gradual rate.