Hands-On Experience in ME

            I am currently part of an on-project that I started on my own almost three years ago. It is a hands-on experience. It is a concept based off of drone technology. The first phase of the project was to develop a “land drone.” In this post, this is the only one phase I will talk about. This may seem easy, but starting from scratch makes it a very tough. There is an infinite amount of ways to go about this. So I applied the condition, “it must cost under $200.” Seems reasonable. Power sources become limited, how it moves becomes limited, and what controls it will use becomes limited. Then, I added that I wanted to make it go as far as possible with the most control possible. Two more conditions to optimize. Using an old RC car chassis, I found a power supply and made sure that the motors and everything still worked. Finding a solution to communicate with the motors from a remote location was a challenge. After a few failed attempts at the problem, my final solution consisted of keeping the controls digital to optimize response and control. The digital solution is the use of WiFi. This was also convenient because routers go relatively cheap on the online market place and are easy to work with. I could mount a network camera onboard and be able to view it from a ways away. Network cameras are much cheaper than other wireless cameras with their receiving units. Back to the control, transferring the signal from the routers became an interesting question. Easy to answer though. As there are still people out there who enjoy doing hands on projects, this means there is an entire market place out there for this kind of stuff. The Arduino shop was my next stop. They supply all sorts of programmable boards that help the user achieve endless results. I bought an Arduino Ethernet board and mounted it on the car. From this point on, I asked my dad for help on the programming as I have limited experience with programming and he had worked with Arduino before. I would continue to work on all of the hardware. The biggest challenge of the project came next. How to wire the entire system? Through a bit a research, I came up with a very complicated breadboard. In the end, it consisted of three voltage regulators, a few resistors, two transistors, and a few capacitors along with several wires leading to the camera, router, router amplifier, Arduino board, the power source, and the motors. It is the heart of this drone.

            Several errors along the way have helped us both learn about the complication and specificity of electronics. The project is still in the first phase. It is days away now from completion of that phase. The last few bugs need to be worked out. Because I am in college now, it is harder to go back home and do work so this drags it out even longer. The project could have been done in a week with the right parts and experienced minds, but because shipping takes time, thinking takes time, trial and error takes time, and the fact that we are both very busy people outside of this, it takes us a lot of time. The next challenge will be to see if an aerial drone can be made in a similar fashion for a similar price.

Interview Questions about Writing

Note: This interview will be conducted with an MSU staff member who partakes in particle physics research around the globe.

1.     You analyze theoretical research in particle research in Switzerland. How do you write your general reports and findings of the ongoing research? How do you format your reports? Where do you put the data in respect to your conclusion?

2.     How much time do you input into your final reports before you submit them to your audience? Who is the audience that you yourself write for?

3.     Do you run any blogs or submit regularly to any specific scholarly mediums? How do you generally report your findings?

4.     Which source of data do you use the most? Is it the data found at the collider facility or do you mainly use other primary sources in your reports? How many secondary sources do you use?

5.     Is the writing in your field mainly attempting to prove theories with data? How much persuasion do you use to convince the audience of your point?

6.     In writing, how much do you use emotion when trying to convince the reader of a certain point? Logic? Common sense?

7.     What is the average length of writing you do in your day-to-day life?

8.     Most importantly, what font choice and font size do you use most often? Why?

Blog vs. Scholarly Article

For this post, we take a look at a Mechanical Engineering (ME) blog as well as a scholarly article. There are many differences and similarities between the two. The biggest difference that we notice is the audience that is being addressed in both of them. The blog that I took a look at, found at: http://www.mechanicalengineeringblog.com/, is very colorful, lots of pictures, and the words can be understood by a larger audience. This blog attempts to address a large internet audience of Mechanical Engineers (ME’s). It posts interesting inventions and findings in the field and also contains helpful forums, Q and A’s, and tips for ME’s. A college student and someone going into the field is likely to be able to read and understand the content as well as enjoy reading it. The style of the blog invokes a happy sense of emotion almost like “Yay, Mechanical Engineering!” It makes ME look good. There are also several explanations and logic to appeal to a reason-based audience of engineers. A lack of resources puts the credibility of page way below the article.

            Taking a look at the article, we see this is not the case. First off, the title: “Mechanical Characterization, Computational Modeling, and Biological Considerations for Carbon Nanomaterial-Agarose Composites for Tissue Engineering Applications” (Nilesh Billade). A very specific sixteen word title. We already notice a high level of education and a very specific audience. This article happens to be a doctoral dissertation. After barely making through the abstract myself, I determined that the audience is not for people in undergraduate studies. The author has several sources listed at the bottom and through thorough explanation, makes a credible approach to his topic. The student is writing for a small board of people who determine whether or not he receives his doctoral degree. A small board of people who probably all have doctorates and are research professionals at the given college. That is the author’s main audience. The article can also be used in the specific field of study, but his main goal is to receive the degree. In this article, we find pages upon pages of 12-point, double-spaced text along with a few graphs and data tables. Lots of logic, facts, definitions, explanations, etc are used in this article.

            The article is very different from the blog, but they are both applying to the same field. The article is addressing the very specific, highly educated people and the blog is addressing Mechanical Engineering as a whole. Two very different pages in a field with two very different approaches.