Viggo Bergström Journal: 2024-2025
5/20/25: this year has been super great I got a lot more work don than I expected an I really like where my project was going. I had a great time writing for the inquirer and I hope next year will be just as great.
5/14/25: I have been working on updating my CV for these last couple of days. that has been the last thing that I have been working on for this year. I decided to take more time to finish my project since i ma staying next year. if i do that the quality will be better that if I just rushed getting it done at the end of this year.
5/6/25: I have come to the realization that i overestimated how much time I needed to complete my project i will use next semester and the next school year to fully complete my project since I am staying next year.
5/1/25/: my inquirer has been approved and i am going to be published also I think I have found a good way to minimize the amount of wires when attaching the lights but I still not certain it is going to work.
4/26/25: poster session went really well I finally had a full map to present at the session but I still am figuring out the lights. its been really challenging with these little lights to figure out an easy way to get them all to light without having a ton of different wires and battery packs.
4/22/25: The new soldering equipment came and now all I have to do is figure out how it all works it looks like it will be really helpful because of all the clips and the large magnifying glass involved. I also finished my inquirer now i just have to wait for the second round to edits and I will see if I get published. making my poster has also been going really well.
4/15/25: we finished the PET machine today. I am also very close to finishing my inquirer. the new lights have arrived and the new soldering equipment also poster session is coming up and this week I am probably going to work mostly on my poster.
now I have finished my inquirer I will ask if it needs to be edited further.
4/8/25: Megan ordered more lights and they are going to arrive next week until then I have to figure out a method to connect all the positive ends of the lights to one wire so I can use one bigger battery pack that will be difficult though because they are insulated on one end.
3/19/25: I realized I am going to need more lights the amount I have is only good for about one section of the map so I am going to ask megan to order more.
3/14/25: building the PET machine has been going really well we are about 2 thirds finished also writing my inquirer has been going really well.
3/8/25: I have marked all the water ways now I need to start drilling holes. I am probably going to go peice by peice insted of drilling all the holes and doing all the lights at once but ill figure out what will be most effective.
3/3/25: All the peices of the map have now been printed. next step would be to mark the map where all the major waterways are in the state. I have also started helping nate build the PET machine that turns plastic bottles into 3d printer filament.
2/25/25: I was sick for quite. While so thats why there hasn’t been an update in a long time. I created an entire new spreadsheet for printing the remaining pieces of the map. I also learned that with the new printer I dont need to convert files to STLs to print them, they can just be printed from 3mfs. However when printed from a 3mf they take on a different shape that doesn’t fit in with pieces that hav been printing as stls. So I think I have to convert them Again.
2/4/25: The printing of the pieces of the map often ran into troubles with adherence to the build plate, in which the first layers kept getting torn up by the nozzle early in the process, causing the print to fail. The solution we found was to make sure the side that encountered the nozzle first was always as close to a straight edge as possible, preventing the nozzle from having to navigate sharp angles early in the printing process.
1/29/25: the new LEDs came in and they work great. They are almost just as bright as the ones i was using before but they are much smaller. this makes them easy to maneuver in the cracks and crevasses of my model. they also only need on hole to function properly. I think they will look way better than the ones I used before.
1/24/25: Megan ordered some micro LED’s. i think they will look better in the ones I was originally planing to use. they seem to be bit more dfficult to get to function so I will have to figure the best way to make them work. I also might consider adding more species to my model and different habitats and ecosystems that are entirely unrelated to salmon. my first thought was to add kelp forests.
1/15/24: I finished the spread sheet today hopefully that makes everything smoother.
1/14/24: the fires have been super hectic and I haven’t had the chance to get any thing else done, but today I started working on a new spreadsheet. Because we are reprinting the whole map in a new filament there have been some issues with duplicate reprints, so I have listed and numbered all the reprints that we have and am going to make an entirely new spreadsheet that only has the rest of the pieces that need to be printed so there are no more duplicate reprints.
1/7/25: This semester I plan to:
Write poster for poster session on april 23
write even more thoughts in my journal
stay on task
12/20/24: It was a fun semester, and I think I made some pretty big leaps in my project. getting the lights to be embedded in the map has been going really well for me, and I think that it will actually be possible to finish this project before the end of the second semester. I am quite excited. As of the end of the first semester, the second map is almost done printing, and I have figured out how I will embed the lights. I just need to figure out how to make the soldering on the underside of the map flat so the map can lay flat on the table for next poster session in the spring.
12/18/24: Winter break is around the corner, so I probably won’t get any work done for a while, but today went really well. Bob gave me a switch, and I was able to connect it to the lights that I had drilled into my map. I think that I am actually moving ahead pretty fast and will make some huge leaps next semester.
12/15/24: My poster has been completed, and I think I am well prepared for poster session. I also tried using the conductive tape to power the LEDs and it didn’t work the way I wanted to. It powered some of them but not all of them. I think that if I am able to find adhesive LED strips that are cylindrical my project will be completed much faster.
12/9/24: My Journal update from last week didn’t save. Anyways I have been postering and reprinting these last few classes I started working on my poster and it’s due in 2 days so i really need to lock in and finish that but I think its going pretty well. Recently megan approved reprinting my whole map. so we have started doing that and have been doing that for the past couple of days. The new printer that WISRD got prints way faster that the old ones we had, meaning printing my map peices has been going really well and really fast I think were already close to halfway done. because we are reprinting the whole map I am able to use my old map as a sort of test dummy for the ideas I had. most recently I have been drilling holes in my old map and placing my LEDs in to see where I want to put my LEDs in the final map. I also figured out that I no longer want to use the LED noodle lights because it is very tedious to arrange and bent them in that way that I wanted to for my original map. I think I am just going to have rows of colored LED bulbs instead of the noodle lights.
12/1/24: We have been on Thanksgiving break for this past week so I haven’t gotten much work done recently. But were going back to school now, and poster session is coming up. I think this poster session will go the best out of all the poster sessions I have been a part of, mainly because I feel I am the most prepared right now.
11/26/24: I was in Connecticut for a while so I forgot to update. My inquirer first draft went really well. I think I chose a really good topic again. the rest of the mapping is going pretty well and We are going to reprint every piece of my 3D map in a new filament that captures fine detail much better. I’m pretty excited about that.
11/12/24: I forgot to update last week. I had a lot of stuff going on, and it just slipped my mind. last week, I was pretty dialed in on the mapping portion of my project, and I got a decent chunk done. Now I just have to lock in and finish my Inquirer. so that’s probably what I’ll do most of this week.
10/29/24: I think my latest updates didn’t save. Either way, Dark Matter Day went really well. It was a lot less stressful than last year, and a lot of people thought our station was really cool. Other than that, I have now started to work on my Inquirer article. I have found some really cool sources about the introduction of non-native trout in Yellowstone National Park.
https://www.nps.gov/yell/learn/management/fish.htm
10/15/24: It’s been a while. It was quite difficult for me to get any journaling done last week because of the PSAT and mock ACT, but I did get some work done with Nate. We basically finished the Tesla coil we were building. However, we lost a spark gap, and we couldn’t finish it to the point of the Tesla coil functioning. I am quite upset about this, Nate and I spent quite a few class periods building this Tesla coil just for it to not work at the end when we finished making it. At least we have some other ones that we didn’t have to assemble entirely on our own so our station for Dark Matter Day is still going to happen. As of today, we have been working on our poster for our Dark Matter Day table. We have found or image we just need to include the information.
10/2/24: My update from earlier this week didn’t save. Anyway, Nate and I have started building a new Tesla coil and it’s going pretty well I think were about halfway through with that one. We also got another small one that I tried to build today in CI, it didn’t go so well I got the LED to turn on but not the Tesla coil. I think that by the end of the next CI period, I will be able to get that working. either that or by the next class period because the more I think about it as I am writing this, Nate and I will probably be able to finish building the large tesla coil before the end of the next class period, and then maybe after that Bob could help me fix the small tesla coil.
9/26/24: Apparently, we have a new Tesla coil. For Dark Matter Day, I am going to the same station, the Tesla Coil station. I’m in a bit of a pickle I have found different sources that say different things about CA Steelhead’s distribution and range. I think that California trout resources are reliable because they handle most of the salmonid conservation in CA, but IDK. I need to do some more digging.
9/24/24: I am a bit behind on making my visual representation of my 3D model for the poster session. As of late, I have just been trying to store the information in my brain, which I realize is a bad idea, and I should be writing stuff down I am going to start putting all the important links and information I find in a special Google doc so I don’t forget anything.
9/18/24: I have made up my mind I want to write about the effects of introducing non-native trout where they are not native.
9/18/24: I’m stuck on which topic I should use for my inquirer. I either want to write about the effects of introducing non-native trout into waters where they don’t belong or kind of repurpose my inquirer article from last year, but instead of talking about the future of salmon species, I would talk about the future of native freshwater trout.
9/12/24: today, I focused on the Northern California Summer run Steelhead. They have declined significantly because of human effects. They are extremely susceptible to the effects of climate change, considering that they have a dependence on cold water in the warmest months of the year. Without human intervention, it is projected that they will go extinct within 30 years. Caltrout.org says that they inhabit waterways stretching from Redwood Creek just under the Klamath River to the Mattole River however, I have found other sources that say they also inhabit the Klamath. If they do indeed spawn in the Klamath River, then the recent removal of all dams will help recover their dwindling numbers. https://caltrout.org
9/11/24: The Klamath River basin is also fascinating. The wide range of different ecosystems is just incredible. In the same river basin, there are both arid deserts and temperate rainforests, among many other different terrains and areas. The Klamath River also supports a large number of other tributaries and tail-waters. For example, the Scott River, Salmon River, and Wooley Creek.
9/11/24: https://www.americanrivers.org, https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov Recently, all of the Klamath River’s hydroelectric dams were removed. The Klamath supports a large number of native salmonid species, among many other fish. The removal of the dams on the Klamath serves as an example of what I am trying to push for with the completion of my project. The removal of the dams will seriously help the native salmonid population of the Klamath replenish.
9/6/24: I guess my other journal updates didn’t save. Anyway, it’s been pretty hard to find information about the historic runs of steelhead. Specifically images that highlight the specific waterways that they inhabit. I have found some info about the names of the watersheds but not any images showing where they are. I might have just to look up where they are and then try and make an educated guess about where they occupied on my procreate rendition. Other than that, I have been researching the recent removal of the dams in the Klamath River. That’s pretty interesting.
8/27/24: Second semester of WISRD. I am going to keep working on the same project. At the moment, I am researching the active and historic ranges of steelhead in California. I realized that if I put every species of salmon on the map, it would overcrowd it and make it hard to read, considering that so many species share the same spawning grounds and spawning paths. So. far, I have learned that the paths of summer run steelhead and winter-run steelhead differ dramatically, with summer-run steelhead occupying only about half as much spawning territory as winter-run strains. I also have planned to work in Procreate on my iPad to create an accurate digital representation of my final product so that I can better explain the plan for my project at poster sessions.