First Semester

I thought that the most appropriate way to end this blog with my seventh and final post would be to give a short overview of my college experience this first semester of my freshman year at the University of Illinois. The semester started out wonderfully with my dorm, St. John's Catholic Newman Center, and adjusting to life away from home. All of the people at Newman were a big part of making my transition to college life smooth, with their welcoming attitudes and spirit of friendship and holiness. Newman has made it easy to make some amazing and wonderful friends and to have so much fun away from the college partying scene, for which I am extremely grateful.

As far as my classes go, I took 17 hours which was a lot but turned out not to be too overbearing. Quantum physics started out difficult and I did a bunch of studying early on for that course, but it got better and I did well in it. My other classes have been a mixture of interesting, boring, easy, and hard. I have come so far in my knowledge this semester, learning the basics of macroeconomics, the extension of calculus into 3 and 4 dimensions, and the principles of quantum and thermal physics. In addition, I was introduced to digital graphics and design, both the Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics curriculums, as well as into iFoundry and Engineering at the University of Illinois.

It has been a good first semester, long in some regards, short in others, but a wonderful start to my college experience overall. I look forward to finishing finals and going back home for a wonderful Christmas break with my family and friends!

Our Arduino Project: The Omniclock

So yesterday was demo day for the arduino projects when we displayed the products of our hard work over the last couple of months. My team, Team Bunny in the 3pm ENG 198 class, created a device which counts down with a physical display dial a time which the user inputs up to 3 minutes. After the countdown is complete, the device plays the Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme Song) using two piezos and has 3 red LEDs which flash along with the song. As four of our five group members are part of the art and engineering design team it was only appropriate that our product also look appealing, and the slick black casing that Matt made for the components does the job nicely. The function of our project was definitely simpler than most of the other groups in our class, projects which included a hovercraft, a morse code translator, and moving vehicles which moved sensitive to light or temperature. However, I think we did the best job creating an actual product, which, if made better and mass produced, could end up as a alarm clock that plays a specified song as the alarm. From this project we not only learned about how many electronics work, but more importantly how to work as a team and use everyone's individual talents and knowledge for the good of the whole. It was a fun project and a wonderful ending to a good introduction to Engineering and iFoundry at the University of Illinois.

The inside wiring of the Omniclock is pictured below: