Don't Shop... Adopt Project
Don't shop, adopt, is about alerting the public about the dangers that Puppy Mills is producing. This project is also about helping shelters that take in rescue dogs, because when we are finished with the final product of our dog house, we will be donating it to those rescue shelters. To involve the physics aspect into this project, we either had to make our dog houses revolving around a physics concept, or an eco-friendly design. In order to achieve this goal, we started out by creating an individual blueprint to get an overall idea of what the dog house would look like, then we did a second draft of the blueprint to add more details and include a materials list. After we got critiques on those, we created an individual dog house prototype! Mr. Vetter then put us into groups, and decided which dog house we would be pursuing. When we decided on which one, we made a completely new blueprint and prototype for those. Currently, we are working on constructing our dog houses.
Photos of the individual prototype:
The physics concept that our doghouse utilizes is thermodynamics, and in specific, absorption. This will be achieved because of the bricks that we will use to build the bottom of the doghouse. The sun will shine on the bricks all day, and the dog will be warm through the night, sleeping on the bricks. During the early day, they will have cooled until the cycle starts again. This is also eco-friendly, because of the bricks that we will use will be adobe bricks. Adobe bricks are eco-friendly because they are made from mud, sand, clay, and straw, which are all available naturally. Another eco-friendly feature that our design incorporates is a green roof. That will include flowers on our roof, and on a trellis leaning on one of the walls. The flowers we will use different colors of petunias for the roof, and clematis konigskind climadors (a breed of clematis) for the trellis. Some of the key environmental benefits from having a green roof include:
- insulation qualities, which means that it will cool off the doghouse on hot days,
- air quality improvement, this is explaining that lower rooftop temperatures mean less smog,
- noise pollution reduction, studies show that noise levels in a building can be reduced as much as 40 decibels while using a green roof (which is best for dogs, as they has sensitive hearing),
- extended life of the roof system, moderated temperature swings that cause a roof system to expand and contract as well as protection from everyday wear and tear.
We are also making educational triptychs for the project. In the group, we need to make at least one triptych about puppy mills and at least one about our physics concept or eco-friendly design. The others can be about anything related to the project. Since I feel very strong about how terrible Puppy Mills is treating the dogs there, I decided to base my triptych on that, and include the emotional distress that I can portray for the viewers to experience an educated opinion of their own.
Photo of first draft of triptych:
Photo of second draft of triptych:
Photos of us constructing the dog house:
Photos of framing aspects of houses: