Mo'o Shapeshifter/ a water sensor tool

Through the spring and early summer of 2024, I have been working with a range of groups on the passive fluid flow activity, Mo’o Shapeshifter, of the Pono STEAM kit. This hands-on paper fluidic activity invites participants to think about passive water flow at a range of scales from millifluidic lab on a chip designs (for use as environmental sensors) to the innovative Hawaiian land management systems of the ahupua’a. An opportunity also arose to modify the activity for a demographic of students with a different cultural context.

The development of this activity was informed by my Pono STEAM kit Advisory Board meetings and I began to laser cutting components, received feedback, and created curriculum sheets for the Kauai Wilcox Elementary school STEM Night. I also shared the activity in a presentation at the Biodesign Challenge Symposium in New Your City in early June. Additionally, I modified the activity for summer camps serving two Salinas, California school districts. For these workshops, a collaboration with the Hartnell College Foundation K-12 STEAM Programs, I laser cut over five thousand laser cut fluidic channels for use in camps serving over three thousand students from K-6th grade.

The Mo’o Shapeshifter activity will be a part of the Kauai Wilcox Elementary School STEM Night this academic school year. This event engages around 300 community members of all ages in Kauai and is led by an amazing STEM teacher Natsumi Yamasato (formerly an architect/building engineer in Japan.) The Hawaiian Solar Bots Pono STEAM Kit activity will also be a demonstration activity at this event. I had hoped to participatein the spring STEM night, but it was on the same day as an event I was coordinating in the Kula burn scar on Maui. I now look forward to bringing the Pono STEAM kit activities to this academic year’s Wilcox Elementary School STEM Night.

Here is the postcard created for this workshop and the educator lesson resource document. These will be added to a webpage housing all the Pono STEAM kit activities soon.

 

 

Below is an early exploration of using chopsticks to hold down the bottom layer packing tape of this assembly. A push pin creates the entry ports, reagent ports and exit ports.

 

 

 

Above: white coffee filter paper being used to laser cut fluid channels representing mo’o lizards, ahupua’a and loko i’a fish ponds. I tried using these flattened white coffee filters as the absorbant fluidic channel material, but it was more fragile than brown coffee filter material. I switched to using the brown coffee filters for the majority of the laser cutting for this event. 

 

 

Above: sample signage and sample materials for the Kauai Wilcox Elementary STEM Night

Additionally, I had the privilege to develop summer camp programming in collaboration with the K-12 STEAM program of the Hartnell College Foundation in Salinas, California. The program serves over 3,000 students across two school districts. These districts are Alisal School District and Salinas City Elementary District. The Alisal School District serves these demographics: 92% Hispanic/Latino, 85% Qualify for Free/Reduced-Priced Meals, 75% English Learners, 10% Homeless Data sourced from Alisal Union School District. The Salinas City Elementary District serves these demographics:  90% Hispanic/Latino, 79% Qualify for Free/Reduced-Priced Meals, 49% English Learners, 38% Foster/Homeless) Data source from Salinas City Elementary District.

For this group, shapes representing geoglyph designs from the pre-Incan Nazca people were included to invite reflection on the innovative passive fluid flow systems of pre-contact Americas. Lessons plans were designed for the divided cohorts of K-2 grade and 3-6th grade students. As I had to laser cut in very large quantities for my hobby laser cutter, I researched and found that there is something called tea bag paper that sells in large sheets. Using this paper reduced a lot of the time I had previously spent flattening and temporarily mounting the small coffee filter paper to larger sheets prior to laser cutting. 

For these Salinas workshops, instead of centering Hawaiian knowledge frameworks embodied in Hawaiian Mo’o deity lizards and ahupua’a, we highlighted the animal geoglyphs of the Nazca people of Peru. The Nazca people designed puquios, ancient innovation systems of subterranean aqueducts which allow water to be transported over long distances in hot dry climates without loss of much water evaporation. As these summer camps also had NASA themed science curriculum, we included discussions of the future of millifluidic environmental sensor devices. The Hartnell Foundation K-12 STEAM Program conducted training workshops and created Spanish language resource materials for the teachers leading the camps at the different school campuses. 

 

Above: fluidic channels in the shape of the geoglyph Nazca Line formations of a bird, monkey and ant. These were included in the kits to invite reflection on an Indigenous culture that developed innovation passive fluid flow systems at scale.

 

Above: large sheets of tea bag paper with laser cut shapes that represent much smaller microfluidic channels used in lab on a chip devices.

 

Above: Handout for 3-6th grade students. This was designed to be open to modification by the Hartnell STEAM Team and translated to Spanish.

The cultural frameworks of these passive fluid flow devices in both Hawaii and Salinas, California were at the 2024 Biodesign Challenge Symposium in NYC as part of my presentation: Cultivating Biodesigners: Integrating Local Biology, Culture, and Place-Based Design in Education.

 

Currently, I am in conversations with a coral restoration organization in Hawaii about bringing the Mo'o Shapeshifter fluidic activity to a community day event and hope to post on that soon.  I also expect to receive feedback on the Salinas summer camp workshops in a few weeks. It is a privilege to continue on this collaborative journey as the activity is adapted in response to community, collaborators, and context of place.