High-Level Project Summary
After the industrial revolution 2.0, human civilization developed rapidly. Until recently, humanity had failed to realize their actions cause the birth of a new threat to life on Earth; Mr. Global Warming. This enemy is born from the build up of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. Although mother Earth naturally regulates the amount of carbon dioxide in the air via the carbon cycle , the enemy is getting stronger daily. If Earth could have a superpower, it should be the ability to accelerate growth of nature such trees. Meet Gaia, our Earth superhero! We hope our character can inspire others to be Earth's superhero by doing their part for the environment via planting more trees.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Introduce to our superhero!
Are you afraid of global warming which can cause unimaginable consequences such as climate change? Meet Earth's new superhero; Gaia! Gaia is our superhero on Earth. Her superpower is nature manipulation like plant growth acceleration.
Excess carbon dioxide is one of the origins to cause the global warming. Our superhero, Gaia is now responding to solve the global warming problem by instantly growing more trees overnight to absorb carbon dioxide. The deforested area can be also restored in a short time. Our earth will never be a bare earth anymore!
But she cannot do it alone. She needs your help to. So you as a member in the earth, please lend your helping hand to Gaia by planting a tree in your community to save our planet.
Solving the problem
Our team hopes to use our superhero character to get more people to be aware of the consequences of global warming and climate change. We designed an interesting character with a fun superpower and hope to use it to promote good environmental practices such as tree planting.
Future plans
We hope to develop our superhero backstory to be more relatable to the audience. Our superhero character can be use in cartoon shows or even superhero movies to encourage children and the general public to have more empathy on the planet and do their part to save the environment.
Space Agency Data
Our team was inspired from reading the open data provided by NASA and other agencies in developing our superhero and her superpowers. It is great that NASA provides such information and students can use it as a credible source of information in this project.
According to Gaia's hypothesis, all the organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintain the conditions for life on the planet[1]. On our Earth, the carbon cycle has a large effect on the function and well-being of our planet. Globally, the carbon cycle plays a key role in regulating the Earth’s climate by controlling the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is important because it contributes to the greenhouse effect, in which heat generated from sunlight at the Earth’s surface is trapped by certain gasses and prevented from escaping through the atmosphere[2].
However, human being tends our Earth to a bad condition. The self-regulating complex system had been destroyed and influenced by an unbalanced carbon cycle. Deforestation for human requirements causes the level of carbon dioxide to increase annually. According to NASA Climate Change website, the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from around 317 ppm in the year 1958 to 400 ppm in the year 2010[3]. This all started after the Industrial Revolution 2.0 in 1870s [4]. If nothing is done, global warming due to the greenhouse effect will become more serious and the effects of climate change will be severe compared to the past [5, 6].
From the NASA data, we know that the Earth is getting worse because of human-being deforestation [7] and man-made carbon dioxide. According to Gaia theory, our Earth is protecting us from living in a peaceful world but human does not value that. Then we use Gaia as our superhero to inspire more people all over the world so that they can be more took care of our unique and lovely Earth by greening our country and surroundings
Hackathon Journey
Everyone thoughts on the project:
LZY:
From this Space App Challenge, we knew more about our Earth's condition. We want to thanks our physic teacher, Mr. Joseph for guiding us till the end of this challenge without any scolding.
Kelvin:
From this challenge, i learnt about the importance roles of plant to reduce the Green House Effect. I am very appreciate that our teacher could guide and inspire us idea throughout the challenge.
JLCH:
It is interesting to see science students to get in touch with their artistic side and have fun with subjects that are not in the teaching syllabus.
SEPHIA:
This project is definitely fun to work with especially when my teammates are all very cooperative and are able to contribute genius ideas. It is a tremendous experience for me because I have never challenged my creativity for an event this big before.
JOSHUA:
In this project, i have learn a lot of skills including video editing, software developing, data sorting and many more. I'm glad that i participate in this challenge and has a nice and talented teacher in guilding me and my friend.
LSK:
This is an out of expected event for me. Special thanks to the organiser. Throughout the hackhathon, I was able to touch into some new industry for me.
References
[2] https://www.globe.gov/documents/355050/14396119/IntroductionToGlobalCarbonCycle.pdf/650d0e25-3944-4ac3-959d-e8da347653f5
[3] https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/7/graphic-carbon-dioxide-hits-new-high/
[4] https://www.landmarkacademyhub.co.uk/climate-change-impacts-of-the-industrial-revolution/
[5] https://climate.nasa.gov/resources/global-warming-vs-climate-change/
[6] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/GlobalWarming/page1.php
[7] https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/Deforestation
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIrkdJnsLPU
[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA81DrDKSps
[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kk0Q_MMuk0s
[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQPdYRh3CME
Tags
#art #gaia #globalwarming #climatechange #plantmoretrees
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.