tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-906217424699189688.post8031033755791267342..comments2022-12-26T08:08:51.595+00:00Comments on Engineering Our Freedom: Do Cartwheels, Feed People4ndyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08675315515117082792noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-906217424699189688.post-18045532588638098442012-05-15T00:01:11.230+01:002012-05-15T00:01:11.230+01:00Justin that's all kinds of awesome. I'm gl...Justin that's all kinds of awesome. I'm glad to hear your sister took up researching orbitropism; sadly at the uni I went to the course structure was quite rigid about what we could do for our final-year project. I would have loved to have taken on any of the projects that I've barely started in the last year as my FYP, since I would have had far more resources at my disposal there and things would probably go a lot quicker.<br />Oh well, anyway from the sounds of your sister's findings, it may be worthwhile for us to research how well a root crop can do in a rotary hydroponic system. That might require some adaptation in growing medium however, such as something spongy other than rockwool (for food safety) that could expand to make room for thick roots. Perhaps something like onions, radishes, baby carrots or even ginger could be grown that way.<br /><br />In the next couple of months I'm aiming to get my conceptual design of a cowled wind turbine to be more at the stage of design completion that the rotary hydroponic system is currently at, which will probably happen once my mad rush to plant seeds in spring dies down a bit. Once I get that figured out, I think I'll see whether I want to prototype energy or food production first, probably depending on what materials I have to hand and whether there has been any oil scare here by that time.<br />I'm not sure whether it would be wise to try a kickstarter/indiegogo campaign to fund prototyping such a piece of open hardware. I loathe all the people who send out silly wasteful trinkets like keyrings, CD's, etc. as rewards to people donating a bit. I'd probably want to send little pot-plants to people. :3<br />Please don't ever stop being curious.4ndyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08675315515117082792noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-906217424699189688.post-56750968434660095632012-05-13T13:14:36.671+01:002012-05-13T13:14:36.671+01:00Wonderful post and blog. I noticed your comment re...Wonderful post and blog. I noticed your comment reply to mine at http://blog.thezeitgeistmovement.com/blog/ben-bishop/designing-food-systems and the sneaky detective that I am, found your blog and this post.<br /><br />I'm very much interested in rotational hydroponics for improving hydroponic yields. The problems I saw was with the lack of scientific data supporting orbitropism as the Omega Garden guy likes to call it. After contacting him, he does admit that published research hasn't been done yet which really needs to be in place to get this growing method better known and utilised.<br /><br />So I suggested this to my sister who was looking for a topic to research for her Hons dissertation in biology. And she thought it was a great idea and so built a scaled done version and made a comparison between plants (lettuce) grown rotationally (tested at various rpm) compared to non-rotational with all other variables such as nutrients, light intensity, distance to light etc. all controlled for as best as possible. The end result was statistically significant additional root and stem dry mass for the rotational plants but no significant difference in leaf dry mass. Unfortunately due to limits on time the plants weren't able to grow to maturity so the leaves were very small - but with more root and stem mass for the rotational plants you would expect faster growth later on as they would have more access to nutrients leading to bigger leaves and more energy for faster growth etc.<br /><br />She's yet to publish it and she's now doing a PhD on a totally different topic so the trail has ended a little. But I am planning on designing my own version to do my own testing (and eating of course). It won't be published as I'm not affiliated with any university but with complete transparency over the methodology and video documentation all posted online it will at least provide more data.<br /><br />Unfortunately I won't be able to start for another 6 months or so until I can get some spare funds and time together.<br /><br />So this is really a 'brother in arms' message with some thoughts for possible collaboration.<br /><br />Regards,<br /><br />Justin (just9700 aht yahoo doht com)Justinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-906217424699189688.post-48613315201564827472011-05-25T02:43:36.347+01:002011-05-25T02:43:36.347+01:00This was a great post, puns and all - but the best...This was a great post, puns and all - but the best part? The MS-Paint art. Fantastic! ;)Phatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01262528321728318630noreply@blogger.com