An engineering student built a miniature replica of AACC’s greenhouse last fall for his physics honors project.
Jonathan Simmons, a second-year engineering student, created a small model of the greenhouse, located next to the Health and Life Sciences Building, for his General Physics 2 class with professor Eric Fons.
“I have not encountered anything like this before,” Fons said. “[It’s] very creative science and engineering work.”
The goal of the project was to mimic the circuitry and inner controls of the greenhouse on a smaller scale.
“I was initially interested in the PID [proportional integral derivative] temperature controller, just as a way to, you know, sort of build out my knowledge of circuits [and] build up my knowledge of thermodynamics,” Simmons said. “When I was speaking with professor Fons, he mentioned that there was a greenhouse next door … and I mentioned how advanced it was and all the different controls they had and he came up with the idea of tying them together.”
Simmons said he considers his model an “extremely lesser” version of the AACC greenhouse.
“It’s kind of intense what [the greenhouse] can do,” Simmons said. “The control that I have of the temperature and the humidity and the light is much less refined than [what] you would have in, like, a full-scale greenhouse.”
Simmons added: “There’s a small amount of programming that goes into it.”
Before starting the project, Simmons and Fons interviewed laboratory manager Michael Norman, who runs the greenhouse.
“I should give him some credit, because he’s the one who took us on a tour,” Fons said. “Mike Norman helped us understand more about how the real big greenhouse works. … It’s a pretty complicated and interesting setup.”
According to Fons, Simmons is his first honors student since before the pandemic.
“More often than not, [the honors program] involves doing all the same kind of course [work as] in the normal course, plus some kind of honors project that they have to do, [which] is research oriented,” Fons said. “Physics courses are difficult enough as they are. … They require a lot of time and energy.”
Most of Fons’ students are in engineering programs and are too busy to take on an honors project.
“[Since] a lot of students are busy with engineering programs … it may not be to their advantage to do an honors contract,” Fons said.
Simmons said he wanted to work on something that overlapped with class topics and his interest in engineering.
“There may be some opportunity for him to pursue the research even further in various ways,” Fons said. “He’s doing very good work.”