fairfolio
Saved Projects

Shade Balls: Sphere vs. Tetrahedron: Using Geometric Shapes to Reduce Evaporation in Open Air Reservoirs

CSEF · 2016 Environmental Engineering Honorable_mention Award

Michael G. Maregne, Dylan E. Shragg · Millikan Middle School, Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles County

Overview

Objectives/Goals The objective is to determine whether different geometric shapes will reduce evaporation better than shade balls (sphere) while at the same time reducing cost. Methods/Materials Materials to make the mold and plastic tetrahedrons: cardboard, Smooth-On Mold Star# 30, hot glue, wooden dowels, razor blade, metal ruler, bucket, plastic cups, stirring sticks, scale, tape, saw, Plexi-glass cut into the shape of a triangle, rubber gloves, Smooth-On Smooth-Cast# 60D, Smooth-On Sonite# Wax, Smooth-On UVO Black Color Pigment, paint brush, rubber bands, water. Materials to conduct the experiment: two plastic containers 1 foot in height, 2 feet in length, and 1 foot in width, 40 liters of water in each container, two different types of shapes (10 of each type), sunlight, scale, measuring tape. Method: Place the two different shapes into their own container filled with water and measure the rate of evaporation. Results The amount of water remaining in the container with the spherical shade balls was 37.0 liters and the amount of water remaining in the container with the tetrahedral shade balls 36.8 liters. After seven days, the tetrahedral shade balls saved 0.20 more liters than the spherical shade balls. These results indicate that the tetrahedral shade balls reduced evaporation more than the spherical shade balls. Conclusions/Discussion According to the data collected, the hypothesis that states if the spherical shade balls and tetrahedral shade balls are placed in different containers filled with water, then less water would evaporate in the container with the tetrahedral shade balls. This hypothesis appears to be supported. It is suggested by the shapes that they can be made to increase the amount of water California saves.

Summary statement

Had a different geometric shape been used in the LADWP's open air reservoir shade ball project, anywhere from $3 to 10 million could have been saved (depending how how the results are calculated)

Help received

Mother and father assisted with handling the chemicals, where to find and calculate equations, the formatting of the report in Microsoft Word, proofreading the report, the SketchUp program which helped analyze different shapes in 3D.

Awards (1)

  • Honorable Mention

Competition history

  • CSEF 2016 Environmental Engineering · Entry J1020

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google