Finals

So I am half way done with all of my finals for this semester. Tomorrow I have Statics and Strengths of Materials and thursday I have Thermal Science and Old Testament. And then I will be home. Finally. Home without any worries or tests to study for or homework to work on. Home where I can relax and sit by the fire and read, and just be content. Thursday is not going to come soon enough.

Take this conventional bridge design

So I am in Statics and Strengths of Materials right now. In this class we learn a lot about members and tension strengths and Elastic regions. However, most people know this class as the bridge building class. We were separated into teams of two and we had to design and construct bridges. Now this sounds like a lot of fun, but when you realize that you only have two days to do lots of math and construct a semi-complicated object completely from designs that YOU have created, you begin to try to simplify things a lot. Most people still manage to come up with a good design that will be more then adequate to hold the required 9kg. In fact, most of them look like this:



My partner Mitch and I decided to move as far away from this concept as possible. In fact we decided to stray as far away from ANY conventional bridge design. That's how we came up with this:



She may not look like much, but if our calculations are correct (and they most certainly are) then it will hold hold close to 100 kg. Whether this is true or not remains to be seen. We get to test them in about a week, so I will let you know how it does.

This started out as simple thoughts but it just kinda snowballed

November is a little over halfway done and I am already ready to shave my face again. The neck beard is really starting to bother me. I know when my mom sees me she is going to tell me I look gross.

I finally get to see my little sister play some basketball tomorrow which is going to be really fun. Then she and the rest of my family gets to see me play ultimate on Saturday which will also be fun.

The new Ben Folds album is really good. It is something of a departure from his older stuff, but if you like Ben Folds then you should listen to it.

I have recently learned that demons no longer take over human beings but instead are now taking up residence in computers. This is very detrimental to the act of making computers work as a whole.

Last Wednesday I got to go to a factory where they make PVC, for my material science class. It was really informative; I now know that I never want to work making PVC pipe.

I have realized that I should not blog. There are people out there who have quirky personalities, or who travel, or who simply live an interesting life. I have realized that I don't have any of those things. Thus why do I write my trivial thoughts about my life? I already know what is going on in it. It isn't like I need to write it down for my benefit; I'm living it. Yet somehow I am compelled to put fingers to keyboard and write down my random thoughts and simple musings. Why are humans drawn to this concept? There has to be some underlying feeling of global importance to write in this medium. Inversely, how very creepy and voyeuristic is the concept of actually searching out and reading said medium? Why is there some strange appeal to know complete strangers thoughts on global politics, religion, and the soup they had today? Why is there a need for instant access into other peoples minds? Is this access healthy for humans, or are we pulling the metaphorical trigger of the gun pointed straight at the head of human interaction?

an interesting factoid

The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen:
"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."
One student replied:
"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."
This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case.
The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer that showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics.
For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:
"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer."
"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper."
"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T =2 pi sqr root (l /g)."
"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up."
"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building."
"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'."
The student was Niels Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel Prize for physics.

Another Lonely Weekend

So it looks to be another busy weekend. I have twice as many labs to grade and twice as much to get done. Oh well I guess that's life.

One of the things that I am doing this weekend is writing a paper for the Arkansas Department for Higher Education (or some-such). They are sponsoring undergraduate research next year on any subject. One of my profs found out about the capacitive sensor that I built over the summer and he suggested that I submit my designs. If they decide to pick it up then I will get to be paid to do research next semester, which would be really great. I have also decided that I am probably going to pursue an REU next summer, which would also give me some good experience. Until then though I have a very large amount of work to get done.

The weekend review

So after the weekend this is what remains of my list:



Not bad really.

I got to experience what engineering is really about on Saturday. Some of the Business Majors at school came to me and asked me to design a product that would keep steam from building on the bathroom mirror during a hot shower (they had other stipulations such as making it 100% efficient and costing less then a dollar to build but you get the idea). I put off working on it until Saturday morning when I rolled out of bed, walked to the bathroom and decided that it would be a good idea to do a proof of concept. I took a hot shower and thoroughly steamed up the bathroom. Then I took Rex's hairdryer and started using it on the mirror, thinking that this would cause the mirror to de-fog. Much to my delight it worked. Not only did it work, but it worked amazingly well. Inspired by this new discovery I proceeded to go to breakfast. As I was getting my cereal the Business Majors approached me and very bluntly said that they had dropped the project and moved on to something else. Thus I had my first real experience with engineering. That is to say that I experienced complete and utter defeat.

Keeping my head above

So I started a list of everything that I need to get done for this weekend...it's somewhat large.

So...yeah I have a lot to do this weekend.  We will see how much of this I actually get done.

Ultimate Fun

So I just got back from the first ultimate tournament of the year.  We ended up only winning the consolation bracket, but the team definitly learned a lot and improved significantly.  So much of our team is rookies that you can't really expect huge things, espescially compared to big school clubs like OU and UofA.

Just as a note, I have never noticed how much ultimate players drink (excluding students from JBU of course).  There was a dude who played for OU walking around with a huge pickle jar full of kool-aide and everclear.  This was at 10 in the morning.  What is really counter-intuitive is that this only makes them play better.  The guy with the everclear was throwing beautiful forhand rollers the length of the field like it was nothing.  However, they are cranky in the morning.

Shiny

I decided to start working on a spaceship in Blender. I do this from time to time and it seems like each time I get a little better. I have never been very accomplished in 3d work so I am proud of what I accomplished in four hours worth of work. Here is what I have so far:



I started with a rough shape and just started forming it as I went. Normally I have a pretty hard time just thinking about the model in my head and then building it, but this time it seemed to go pretty smooth. So far the back is the only thing with a lot of substantial work on it and it is only about 60% detailed, so I still have a lot of work to do. I rendered some shots of the back section:





The original concept was based on Serenity (from firefly). Once I started though the model began to take on a different form so very little is left of the original firefly concept (the spinning grav ring made it though).

Speaking of firefly, I discovered this show yesterday on hulu.com and proceeded to watch the entire season. I had always heard that it was pretty good, but I had never seen it. All I can say is I loved it. It was so good my day became really sucky because I realised that they aren't going to make anymore seasons. Now I understand why everyone was so upset. Oh well at least I have the movie (which I plan on purchasing as soon as I have money). Everyone should go watch firefly now goramit. You wont be disappointed.

3d capacitive controller and some art

I started playing with a capacitive controller the other day. It works on the principles of capacitance (like the iPhone, just not a s cool) obviously. Basically it is three pieces of cardboard with some aluminum foil taped to it. Those pieces of aluminum are connected to my little arduino board through a couple resistors. For each "plate" I set up a basic RC circuit with an extra resistor to protect the arduino from any surges that may occur. The plates are arranged in a sort of half cube position. When I put my hand in the middle of them each plate uses my hand as its second plate. The arduino board calculates the amount of time it takes for each plate to reach a HIGH signal. I can then use that data to determine that distance that my hand is from each plate. Right now I am using the controller with a simple tone generating program I wrote in processing. So far it seems to be working fairly well. I can control the pitch, phase, and volume of a simple sine wave just by moving my hand around. There are a lot of applications for technology like this (as can be seen with the iPhone). I think something like this could be used along with a multitouch system to achieve some cool effects. One of my next projects is a multitouch table so maybe I can include some of this stuff. After that I just need to add a wiimote and then I will be golden ;)

Along with all this technical stuff I have found time to do some sculpting. I am almost finished with my first sculpture ever (aside from playdo when I was 5) so I will try to post some pictures.

Until then...

Robot Pics

I finished up my first robot and I took a couple pictures.












My robot is a photophobe (it doesn't like light), and it has two photocells on the front of its nose. This thing is made out of stuff that I just had around the house already (I am a geek. I have a lot of electronics lying around). Although the base looks like crap and uses a plastic bottle as a caster it actually is very sturdy. All the wiring is done with a Arduino microcontroller and a breadboard. I used the breadboard because the arduino doesn't have any sort of power bus and IMO doesn't have very sturdy wire connections. All of the earlier versions of the board look like they have headers (which would be perfect) but the one I have just has these wire inputs like you would find on a breadboard. They just don't hold wires very well. The code took some time to get right, but after about two hours I got it all working. The robot works well, considering the shodiness of the photocells that I used (I did mention that I found everything in my house right?). It was very exciting to see it work for the first time. If one of the sensors has more light then the other it will turn away from the greater light source. This code could be changed so that the robot goes after the greater light source. Actually that was originally the way the code was supposed to be, but I got the commands backwards when I was coding and once I started testing it I decided I liked it. All in all I am really proud of my little bot. I plan on building another more sophisticated bot soon that has a lot more room to expand and has more advanced sensors (and hopefully it will actually serve a purpose ;)

Robots

So I started making a robot today. I was able to get two servos modified for continuous motion, I built two photocell sensors and I have most of the body of the robot built. I will try to get pictures up soon.

Compressor Finished

I finished up the compressor I was working on. I got the IC plugged in put it all in a housing and fired it up. Worked first time right out of the gate. Oh and speaking of gate, I still haven't gotten the trim pot adjusted perfectly on it so the sound is still kinda gated especially when you really try to wail on the guitar. Oh well I will fix it soon.

Guitar FX Compressor

So I started working on a compressor for my pedalboard today. The design I'm using is based off of the MXR Dynacomp. The PCB I used is from the wonderful people at General Guitar Gadgets. They have great service and support so if you are looking for a PCB they are a great place to start.

The PCB came in today so I fired up the soldering iron and got to work populating the board. I will let the pictures do most of the talking.



The board with all of the resistors and jumpers soldered in.


Next the Film Caps.


The board fully populated (sans the IC). All I have to do now is do all of the offboard wiring and stick it in a box. I hope I can get that done tomorrow, because right now I'm tired of smelling burning solder.

Obligatory First Post

Here we go. My plan is to post updates on projects and designs that I am working on here. Ok done with that crap.