In order to build a building we need to know what our building is going to be built on. We spent around 2-3 days learning about the Earth's layers and how they work. There are 4 layers of the Earth, the crust, mantle, outer core, and inner core. The crust is estimated to be anywhere from 5 to 25 miles thick and made mostly of solid rock and materials. The mantle is 1,800 miles thick and is considered to be made of molten rock. Although the flow of this rock is the equivalent of the flow of solid glass. The outer core is liquid iron and nickel surrounding the inner core. The inner core is 800 miles thick and is also iron and nickel. although the pressure is so high that the iron and nickel is not able to melt. Many humans have tried to drill to the center of the Earth, but the closest we have come was from 1970-1994 where a Russian scientist spent decades drilling into the Earth, coming to a total of 7.5 miles. Only about a third of the way through the Baltic crust.
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Moving closer to our project, this lab was designed to show us what daylighting techniques, that are used today, are the most efficent. Although there are many of these techniques we focused on skylights, clerestory windows, solar tubes, light shelves, and windows. We then made a scale model of a 1000 square foot home designed however we like it. We then used all the daylighting techniques listed above on our house. To simulate the sun we used a lamp, and dependng on the day and the month, the lamp would be moved accordingly. Althogh we did not have the available equipment needed to measure the amount of light in our rooms, we used our eyesight and took an educated guess as to the percentage of light in the room, 100% would be sunlight, 0% would be pitch darkness.
In conclusion, we found out that the more direct the sunlight is the higher light percentage there is in the room(makes sense). We also found that the east and west side of the house have a steady amount of sunlight until the sun passes noon. Since the sun rises in the east, the eastern part of the house would have a steady amount of sunlight until about 1:00 pm. Where as The western side of the building would have very little sunlight unti about 1:00 pm, but would have steady sunlight until sunset. The side of the house that had the most constant amount of sunlight was the southen side of the house because it is not limited to the angel of the sun during the day besides sunset and sunrise. It is also the side facing the equator which always has a steady amount of sun. Since it is facing the equator it is going to get more sunlight in the winter when the northern part of your house would be facing towards the north pole. Results will most likely change depending on where you are, but these findings are directed towards a home near the bay area. |
ModelAbove is a picture of our cardboard model and images of the notes we took.
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