Great news kalers!! Our system is still working after this weekend!! Even though two of our plants died and the flow rate of water decreased in one of the systems, we still have high hopes.
To fix the issue of not as much water going through the system, we shortened the height of the tube by about an inch and turned the air pump up. This helped tremendously and now both of our systems have a steady flow rate. The system with nutrients (on the left side) has an average flow rate of 1.130 drops per second and the system without nutrients (on the right side) has an average flow rate of 1.083 drops per second.
We also measured the height of each plant, and the heights on Day 1 are shown below (plants starting with 1 are in the system with nutrients, plants starting with 2 are in the system without:
Here's a picture of our systems today! Check back soon for another update on how much our kale has grown!