Breaking Ground (From Matt)

Okay, first of all, this is Matt doing this, not Nikki. Something weird happened and I didn't get invited to the blog, so I couldn't edit it, and Nikki helped me out. Second, this is for Wednesday and Friday's classes.

9/28
Anyway, on Wednesday we started building off of the idea that we decided upon recently. After the class where we decided what our monument was going to look like, not without much debate and disagreement, we began the planning stages.

Ms. K had sent me her blueprints of some of our plans, but my computer is being screwy and I can't figure out how to get them on here. Sorry...

The planning mostly involved deciding on a list of supplies to buy for the actual building process as well as what supplies we would actually need from nature. We would need to buy things like buckets, shovels and a wheel barrow to be able to transport large materials like logs or rocks. The greatest achievement of the day was the transport of a massive log found on Hopkins' HOPE Trail. It took the entire class to move it, but together we were able to move something that could be considered megalithic. Ha ha!

9/30
Today is the day. We are beginning the process of building our art. To start we were placed into teams. Some used white spray paint to mark the area where the digging is going to begin. Others gathered materials like rocks and sticks. And still others cleared brush, allowing our art to be better seen from the road.

My group was Research and Development. Sam, Nikki, Cody and I were in charge of finding the best way to make mud without it washing away too much in the rain. Once we got the mud made, we made three sample mud bricks and left them out to dry. One brick contained just mud, acting as our control. The second brick had dried grass, which we hope will hold the mud together making it stronger. Our prediction is that this will be the strongest mud brick. Finally, our last brick had small rocks mixed in. We hope that this will allow it to act like concrete.
The strength behind this test remains unknown.

The construction process is well underway, but we still have a lot of work to do in the weeks ahead.