iFoundry and ENG 198

First Semester

2009-12-08T19:28:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-08T19:12:00.001-08:00

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:

Truss Building Competition

2009-11-19T11:22:00.000-08:00

So I have been in TAM 195 this semester, which is an intro into Engineering Mechanics, and our final and major project was to design, build, and test a wooden truss. The truss had to be designed to certain dimensional specifications and would be tested by the the application of a central load using the 3,000,000-lb Southwark-Emery testing machine located in Talbot Lab on campus. Because the goal of the project was to support the greatest load per weight of the structure, we decided to design a simple strong that would transfer the majority of the load to tension in the horizontal beams. After designing the structure and building during a class period one day, we finally tested the structures in the class competition on Tuesday. And, although our structure was not the lightest and did not carry the greatest maximum load, it did have the highest ratio of the two, which was the goal of the competition. Our structure was 36 pounds and carried a maximum load of 15,000 pounds, making a maximum load to weight ratio of 416.7, which, if I do say so myself, is quite remarkable. Our professor, James Phillips said in class that he once designed a truss with a ratio of over 400! Needless to say we won the competition and had a great time competing and implementing our knowledge of forces and structures to design and build this champion truss.

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Trip!

2009-11-15T11:20:00.000-08:00

So this Friday my iTeam, AED, went on a field trip to visit SOM, a world-renowned architecture firm, in downtown Chicago! We woke up before 6 in the morning in order to make a 7 am bus ride to the city. Once we arrived downtown, we took the subway and walked to Michigan Avenue where SOM is located. There we were welcomed by Keith Besserud, our iCOA at SOM. After introductions, he gave us a tour of the office and described some of the projects that the firm is currently working on, many pictures and models of which were displayed at the office.

We then took seats in a conference room where Keith introduced us to two of his colleagues, a structural engineer and an sustainability designer who both gave very interesting presentations addressing the correlation of their respective fields to architecture. The structural engineer talked about the relationship of math to design and how a greater understanding of the way forces flow, known by mathematical formulas, can lead to more efficient structural design. The sustainability designer talked about the optimization of different building schemes in order to minimize carbon emissions and overall power usage. Especially interesting in his presentation was the design process which he described that led to the innovative wind turbines in the Pearl Wind Tower, an SOM-designed structure world renowned for it's implementation of energy-saving techniques.

Then, over lunch, Keith gave a presentation about his group, the Blackbox Team, which is small team within SOM which focuses on designing through advanced computational methods. He gave us a brief crash course in the process, often involving genetic algorithms, and showed us some remarkable results from his work with these processes. After these presentations we thanked Keith for a wonderful experience and left the office to do some walking around Millennium Park and downtown. Several of our group members visited the Art Museum and then we jumped back on a train to Champaign, arriving back around 7 pm. All in all, a great day to establish a firm connection with our iCOA, Keith Besserud at SOM, and learn about some really cool architectural design processes along the way!

Steam Car Success!

2009-10-16T08:09:00.000-07:00

This past Monday, after hours and hours of work on our model steam car, we were finally able to showcase all of our hard work. Writing the project report describing the processes involved in building the car and the problems we encountered along the way was not exciting, actually running the car in competition was a blast!

However, after checking the car over and taking 2nd in the fastest start-up competition, we encountered a problem with friction when we set the car down to race. Our boiler a

nd turbine system was working wonderfully, getting the front wheel spinning at a considerable rate, but when the first heat started and we put the front wheel down, it slowed down considerably and the car moved at a much slower rate than we had gotten it to move in previous test runs. As a result of this, we took second in the first heat. At first we thought the front wheel, because it was initially spinning so fast, was slipping on the concrete. But after watching more closely during the second heat, in which we also took second, we realized this was not the case, that instead there was friction somewhere which we had not eliminated.

After taking a closer look at the car, we discovered the plastic tubes holding the back wheels onto the axle had somehow been tightened. After loosening these and oiling up the axles once again, the car ran as smoothly and as fast as ever and we won the 3rd heat by a fairly wide margin. Unfortunately, although our car had certainly proved itself to be the fastest, we did not advance to the finals because of the way the competition was structured. But we did run our car concurrently with the final race and were pleased to discover that, had we been in the race, our car would have won by a fair margin.

The extra speed our car displayed, once we fixed the friction problem, I think was due to two heat shields (not pictured) we placed over the boiler which helped to trap the heat and therefore heat the water to a greater temperature and eject the steam at a faster rate. This resulted in a faster-spinning turbine and ultimately in a faster car. For this modification, we received the runner-up award for best modification as well as several other awards based on the appearance of our car, which we had painted red and black.

Overall, our model steam car project was a success in which we were able to solve problems in the moment and implement a few good ideas in order to improve the car and make it our own.

The need for greater organization in iFoundry

2009-10-04T12:29:00.000-07:00

So this iFoundry thing is starting to become a bit vexing. There is so much work involved in it and I do not seem to be getting much out of it. This applies to both iFoundry itself as well as the class that goes along with it, ENG 198, which I feel has become too much work for just one measly credit hour. Although meeting with people from the world of work is interesting and potentially helpful, it is difficult to get something out of that because we still lack the technical knowledge to actually apply the principles which are presented to us. But besides that, the iFoundry meetings often seem like a waste of time, not because the leadership of the iTeam is lacking, but because we still seem to have little real direction in what we are trying to do. Because of that, the interest level and consequently the attendance at iTeam meetings has been waning. I feel that our iTeam has done a good job with the tools available to us in order to give some structure to what we are trying to do, but because the overall organization of iFoundry has been lacking, this has been difficult to do. I feel that, at this point, iFoundry has become too much of a time commitment compared to the value that I get out of it. It has been difficult to enjoy as well because of that feeling of lack of progress and motivation. It seems that this would be a much better initiative to start sophomore or perhaps junior or senior year, because by then we would not only have the technical knowledge available to us in order to put the things we are learning to use, but also because we would be much closer to the point in time when we would be ready to enter the working world and use that information. If something doesn't change within the next year regarding the overall structure or purpose of iFoundry, I feel that many students will completely lose interest and drop out of the program, making it much less effective to create a meaningful change in engineering education at U of I and throughout the country.

Steam Car Project Progress

2009-09-21T19:12:00.000-07:00

The steam powered model car project in ENG 198 is coming to a close with only one day left to finish. On day one we started each individual piece of the project. Day two consisted of doing only as much as we could with our original parts locked in the cabinet. After a third day of very productive work, almost all of the individual pieces are completed, the wheels have been soldered, the frame is built, and the car is ready for final construction. It is now Peter's, our project manager, job to direct the final assembly and testing of the car next week on the last day of the project. My individual part was the turbine, which I have almost completed. All that is left is to curl the spokes further so that they fit snugly on the lid and can be placed into the car. With only one day left in the project, our team is under control and ready to turn out a finished product!