A slight delay...

This past week the parabolic concentrator project was approved by our engineering mentors!!!  I was a little nervous about our proposal that we wrote for this project.  We had to explain the need and prove that this was possible from an engineering and financial standpoint.  I imagine that this is going to be what the workplace is going to be like as a working engineer, so it was good practice.

A member of my team almost backed out this week due to his course load, but he found out that he went passed the add/drop date.  This caused a little delay in ordering our parts.  Tomorrow we will be going to home depot to start building the framework for our parabolic concentrator.  Pics will be posted as soon as we start building.




After this first month of school this is how I feel, oddly enoughI don't feel to bad about it either.

Fingers Crossed.

This week, my team and I have been putting the final touches on the proposal for our project that is due on Friday.  This part of our project is going to be good practice for later.  If I end up doing R&D, and I have an idea for a new product, I am going to need to write a proposal to my boss before I get any money for what I am doing.  This will be my second semester with these mentors, so we know what they are looking for in regard to this proposal.  Hopefully on Friday we will get the green light, and can start ordering parts and making trips to Dome Depot.  If anyone has an old washing machine they don't use let me know.  We might have use for the motor.  The image below is pretty close to the parabolic concentrator model that we drew up in solid works.

Parabolic Concentrator

It was good to see all of you last Friday.  I am looking forward to learning about all of your individual projects!  For my project this semester, my colleague and I have decided to build a parabolic concentrator that will turn a steam turbine and generate electricity.  There are a ton of unknowns this semester, and hopefully this project will be a success.  Our goal is to eventually generate enough electricity to power a single family home (appx. 15kWh).  Most of my time on campus will be spent in the math department, so swing by if you want to talk about anything, school related or not.  Below is a GIF of the steam turbine we will be using for this semester.

Final Push

I hope that most of you are aware that after this week classes are officially over and all that remains to be done are class finals.  If not, SURPRISE!!! It's practically finals week!  I don't know about the rest of you but I have been cranking out the research paper that is due this evening, just to write another ten page engineering analysis of my project for South Mountain CC.  Then, if time permits I can study for next week.  Thanks to the rigorousness of the project at South Mountain my research paper was practically done, I just had to put all of my data into research paper format.  This time of the year is when I think I grow the most new gray hairs.  I can't wait to see the results of everybody's projects tomorrow afternoon.  I feel like I have just gotten a tiny glimpse of each of your projects due to not seeing any of you in lab this semester.  Tomorrow it will all come together for me.  See you then!!!

Found this image to be incredibly helpful this week.  I think I'm going to put it on my desk at home.

blogs.bu.edu

NASA Conference

This week was a pretty mellow week in regard to my semester project.  Our project is complete and we presented our data last weekend at U of A.  You guys will see a version of our powerpoint on May 2nd, or whenever we are presenting out data to the S-STEM group.  From here on out is just going to be ironing out the research paper associated with this class.  There has but a lot of study on this topic, but to my dismay there have not been many articles written on this topic.  I am hoping to find a holy grail of sorts that will lend me all of the supporting information required to complete this paper.

After our presentation last weekend our mentor professors told us that not only were we the rowdiest group they have ever had, but we were also the best.  This made me feel good about my future, that I will not have to sell out and "grow up" to be around a bunch of conservative engineers.  I have always been an individual and plan on continuing that trend.  It is good to know that I can kick some serious butt at something and not be frowned upon for being a goofball to loosen up the group dynamic!

Below is a 60 sec edited video of the balloon's launch!

Symposium Time!!!

Hey Everybody,

After our successful balloon launch a couple weeks ago, we had to hurry and put together a powerpoint and data analysis for the National Space Grant Symposium at U of A this Saturday.  It seems like this entire semester it has just been one thing after another.  I feel like I am never caught up.  To make matters more complicated, I just found out that a rough draft for our research papers are due tonight!  Good thing it is just a rough draft, and all of my data analysis/questions/abstract has already been completed for the purpose of my own project.  To give you guys a an idea of what my data looks like, I have some VERY beautiful excel graphs that show our data analysis.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Great Success!

Last Saturday my group launched our payload into near-space.  Everything on our end went according to plan, but the guys at ANSR (Arizona Near Space Research), forgot to bring the parachute for our balloon, so launch was delayed by about 4 hours.  Good thing there was a bowling alley in the middle of the desert at some casino!!!  All of our sensors worked perfectly and now its time to analyze everyone of our 11,106 data points.  This analysis will be presented the weekend of Apr. 12th at UofA.  Our payload took a ton of supercool pictures...let the slideshow begin!!!