Coming back into week 3 after resting over the weekend was nice. Over the weekend, some interns and I visited the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences. Even though I have been in Houston for about a year, this was my first visit to the museum, and definitely not my last. There was so much to see and despite spending 3 hours there, we could not see it all. It was interesting to see the exhibits, which ranged from talking about physics to Ancient Egypt to Texas wildlife. Exploring and learning about things I hadn’t thought about or considered before was refreshing.
Anyways…back to the project. On Monday, we had a meeting with our clients to clarify some ideas they had given us over the weekend. We have a messaging group with our clients for ease of communication, but when different people are throwing out different ideas (essentially 5 people are our clients) it can be hard to keep track of, which is why we set up the in-person meeting. In the meeting, we clarified the project scope, and which responsibilities were ours and theirs. We also introduced the new materials that we wanted to use and asked for their feedback. They gave us some suggestions on some other options, but they gave us the green light to go ahead.
After talking over all the questions and concerns that we had, we went over to the hydroponic system and retrieved our previous tests to analyze them. We noticed that some mold and fungus had started to grow, so we made the decision to clean out the system. Cleaning it out took about three hours, using an autoclave for the metal parts and scrubbing and bleach for the plastic parts. This process was a bit tiring, so we were glad we were finally done.
We had a day off on Wednesday for Juneteenth, so that gave the system time to clean out and gave us time to relax. Some interns met up for lunch at Mendocino Farms in Rice Village, and we all enjoyed the outing! When we got back to work on Thursday, we cleaned out the hydroponic system and switched the bleach out for water, but we were having some trouble with the pumps. Our team divided and conquered, with two people working on the pumps and two generating more ideas and solutions. By the end of the day, we had solved our problem with the pumps and finished our solutions.
Finally, on Friday we started new tests in the hydroponic system. Additionally, we discussed our progress so far and our goals for next week. We still have plenty of testing, so that is our focus for the coming week.
I am greatly enjoying this program and project so far and am glad I got to be a part of it!
P.S. My project is protected by intellectual property, so I have to be a little vague in my summaries and refrain from adding pictures 🙂