Designing a WaxLess Ski

My Math Model:

































*Note, in my drawing the mg arrow/force should be acting downward, not upward like I have it in my picture above. 

My Plan is to use my derived equation to calculate mu (the friction coefficient).  Then run my experiment to get data.

Experiment Validation:

Why:

The Goal of this experiment is to find data that will tell us more about the friction of ski’s in motion.  While doing this we will validate the math model I derived and modify it as we learn more about how the experiment and friction changes things.

Knowledge Construction:

             In order to get an accurate representation as to what the friction of the wax less skis will be, I will need to take plenty of data points in order to get better results and rule out outliers.  For this experiment I need to know the mass of the skier, or skiers, the velocity, and the distance traveled.  In order to get good results I need to vary my runs with the weights of at least two different people that are of average weight for those who ski.  I will also have to work with using different distances and velocities to see and understand how the data changes.

Hypothesis:

            I feel through research that the coefficient of friction on a wax less ski will be around 0.6.

Experimental Design:
Goal:
            1. Record the measurements for mass, velocity, and distance traveled.

            2. Use two different masses, one for average male, one for average female.

            3. Record 10 data points for each mass.

            4. Use this data to calculate the coefficient of friction.

            5. Compare experimental findings to the math model findings.

Ideas:
            1. Use a mobile phone with an app to measure velocity.

            2. Try to vary the velocity in order to get a range of speeds.

            3. Push the person while they are standing on the skies.

            4. Use two different people of average weights for male and female skiers.

            5. Measure distance traveled.

            6. Test on varieties of snow surfaces (packed snow, wet snow, and powder)

            7. Record all findings, good or bad.

Procedure:

1.      Find test subjects to participate in the experiment.

2.      Find a uniform snow area of a flat surface with enough room for multiple runs.

3.      Have the test subject stand on the skies.

4.      Have the skier hold the phone or item with the velocity app.

5.      Push the skier.

6.      Measure the distance traveled.

7.      Record all data, weights, speed and distance pushed.

8.      Do 10 runs for 10 data points.

9.      Now repeat steps 3-8 with the next skier.

10.  Now repeat steps 3-9 on each type of snow situation.

11.  Collect and review the data.

Execution:

            Run the experiment and collect data. After data is found, read and study the data and continue testing with modifications where needed.

Learning as a Life Skill

1a. According to the curriculum what does learning mean? How would you recommend improving this definition? Why?

            Learning is the process of becoming better at something that is useful.  To improve this definition, I would add that it is the never ending process of becoming better at something that is useful because one is never fully done learning since there is always room to learn more and know more.

 

1b. Why are competent professional very good at learning to learn? How is being good at learning relevant to being be a competent professional?

            Competent professionals are good at learning because they are used to knowing that there is always room to know more and become better at what you do.  They have a strive to always want the next greatest knowledge and be a part of something bigger.  Being able to learn is important to become a competent professional because they have to keep learning otherwise they lose knowledge and become outdated. 

 

2. According to ABET, what does "getting an education" mean? That is, what are competencies defined by ABET?

             Becoming top notch in knowing the categories involving being: technically current, effective at communicating, interpersonally skilled, team oriented, professional, and organized.                     

 

3. How would you define "getting an education?" How would measure whether or not you are getting an education. What do you want out of your education beyond a grade and a degree?

            I would define getting an education as learning something practical to your field of study while in school.  Not just something, but in my case everything I can possibly learn in college for becoming a good engineer.  I feel that this also ties into getting internships in order to boost one’s ability of knowing some of the practical side and hands on side of things as well.  To measure this I would check how well I know and work in the areas that ABET’s competencies cover.  Out of my education, I would like to know and be competent in everything I just listed.

 

4. What is your way of explaining neuroplasticity? How does this line up with your past experiences? That is, do your past experiences suggest that your brain has remodeled based on experiences?

            Neuroplasticity refers to the brain being able to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life.  It is intimately involved with the environment in which the person is immersed. This means that while you do things your brain is constantly relating it to things you have already done, make a huge spider web of knowledge.  This relates to some of my past experiences, for example my first year driving combine was before college and I never thought of much when I was operating it.  As the years went on and I learned more, I started thinking about the loads and stresses on different parts and the efficiencies throughout the machine and so one, so I do believe that my brain has remodeled based on my experiences because of how I think of things differently.

 

5. What is your way of explaining Carol Dweck's MindSet theories? Which belief system do you think is followed by successful professionals (people like Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, the Wright Brothers, Will Smith). Why?

            All her theories are based on learning and never giving up in order to grow.  She does this by looking into and researching how students view themselves as learners.  I feel that any successful professional followed the theory of never giving up and instead react to failure by trying harder.  If they had given up, they would have never accomplished anything good in life. 

6. What is your way of explaining the beliefs-to-results chain (BRC)? How can competent professionals use the BRC to improve both results while also having more fun.

           Since people feel very strongly towards their believes and follow them with a passion, if you have a great believe that can cause a lot of good for people, or can change something for the better, then you should work with your believe and turn it into results.  Professionals can have more fun with this and improve results because they are working with something they are truly passionate about which makes their job more meaningful.

7. What is your way of explaining Anders Ericsson's theory of deliberate practice?  How would competent professionals apply this theory for themselves and for their team?

            Deliberate practice is made up of people working hard and practicing getting their knowledge down in order to become an expert in their area of expertise.  Competent professionals would apply this theory for themselves and their team in order to become better by working hard on what they do, whether it be studying new books and learning more skills and concepts, or going out and working with their teams on a project in order to make it better.

Learning Project Management

Step 1.

My reasons to learn project management is because my entire future will be based off of projects and I will be doing lots of them so it is worth my time to invest and learn how to do them correctly and efficiently.  This topic will help motivate me to work on projects instead of stress out over them.  I won’t be stressing out because I will know what to do, and how to do it so my project is successful and done on time and on budget.

Step 2.

Basically Project management is a process that one goes through in order to reach their final goal in the easiest and most practical way while not letting your project fail.

The Main concepts are Complexity; which states that all projects are difficult and we have to avoid trying to make a project that is step by step, instead we have to learn to deal with how it goes.  Next is Decomposition; this is where you break down the problems at hand into ones that are easier to manage and accomplish.  Next is Task; this is where the project is broken up and everyone involves figures out which part they will call their own and solve subparts of this are the WBS which explains what each person is working on, and the Gantt Chart which shows how tasks work with each other to reach the goal.  Next is milestone, this is where major parts that get you to your final product are accomplished.  Lastly is the Execution, a process of doing useful things leading to the goal.

Step 3.

I am using PM currently in the final project for ME223 as well as working on studying for finals.  Both relate in that I am working on little parts at a time so I don’t get overwhelmed trying to do or learn everything at the end.  This way is easier for my because when working on the project I get parts done and slowly work to seeing the final product which the little successes help make me feel good and wanting to do more.  With the studying I learn and get down the concepts I need to know without as much confusion.

Step 4.

I repeated this process until I felt comfortable with my knowledge, or until the project was done.  As of the time of posting this, the project is still going on and we are making good progress.  Everyone has a task and we meet up and combine what we have every so often and then continue with more work.  With my studying I will continue doing this until each of my finals is over with.

Deliverables

Deliverable #1. See Step 3,4

Deliverable #2. I learned that not all projects are linear and that I should go with the flow more, I also learned that nothing can be solved or finished overnight let alone a 2 hour period, lastly I learned that many projects fail and if we don’t take the time to see if ours is good, it is likely that we are wasting out time.

Deliverable #3. I learned that it takes a lot of effort to learn something, That one is never done learning and you never know where your next piece of knowledge will come from, and lastly I learned that even though it seems longer to break up projects, it actually gets done faster because you are not stressing yourself out.

 

Arduino Challenge Problem

Problem Statement
Use an arduino to operate a Servo by moving it back and forth.

This skill is very important to Engineers because so far in this class we have not worked with Servo's, but it is a skill we should know how to do and there is lots of info online for how to do this.  I am keeping the task simple since it is a new concept that we should learn.

Key Facts

Power

Connect the red from servo to +5V on arduino.

Ground

Connect black/brown from servo to Gnd on arduino.

Signal

Connect white/orange from servo to Analog in 0 on arduino.


Solution (Physical World)A working moving servo.

Code
#include <Servo.h>

Servo servo1; Servo servo2;


void setup() {

  pinMode(1,OUTPUT);
  servo1.attach(14); //analog pin 0
  //servo1.setMaximumPulse(2000);
  //servo1.setMinimumPulse(700);

  servo2.attach(15); //analog pin 1
  Serial.begin(19200);
  Serial.println("Ready");

}

void loop() {

  static int v = 0;

  if ( Serial.available()) {
    char ch = Serial.read();

    switch(ch) {
      case '0'...'9':
        v = v * 10 + ch - '0';
        break;
      case 's':
        servo1.write(v);
        v = 0;
        break;
      case 'w':
        servo2.write(v);
        v = 0;
        break;
      case 'd':
        servo2.detach();
        break;
      case 'a':
        servo2.attach(15);
        break;
    }
  }

  Servo::refresh();

}

Problem Documentation

Author: Chris Jerue

Date: 11/14/12

Growing My Performance in Collaboration

Defensive Reasoning

While people are in the process of learning many of us run into a wall. They reach a point where they think that others peoples advice is negative criticism and they think that others are judging them and this limits their ability to grow and use that information for good and become better. Having the ability to except someone else's criticism is vital to learning. Learning from others is one of the best ways to gain new knowledge and learn other consumer’s views. Many others go into defensive reason when they begin to struggle because they are not open minded to others.

 Defensive reasoning has some noticeable signs. First people will act negatively and resort to anger as they go against what others say. Next if you point out that they are defensive they will deny aggressively and/ or evade the topic. Finally they will blame their struggles on others or on the task itself. They will fall short of using high order thinking as their primary order of thought.

Defensive reasoning causes growth issues and growth is important to learning and enjoyment. Using defensive reasoning can stop this growth because it stops input from other. While input from others is one of the best ways to grow. Their knowledge can bring new insights to troubles that are at hand as well as an idea of what other people want out of your product. To get passed this one must learn to separate the perceived negative criticism as helpful and constructive advice. This is a biological process.

To overcome this problem one must first recognize the issue as a biological problem that must be overcome. They must then accept the emotions and learn to let them pass. And finally apply the SII method to improve.

 

SII Method

1.Define your strengths - define the most beneficial strengths, in order of most beneficial, be specific and  truthful

 2.Decide on improvements - Identify some areas of improvement, be thorough and specific.

 3.Look for insights on the problem - look for insights that are not know to yourself.

 

Example of SII

 1.Strengths

 •Value others input

 •I work hard on finding out what other people’s opinions are.

 •Working in a team I try to make sure everyone who has an idea is able to share and explain it before judgment.

 •I always do my part

 •I also try to make sure everyone else is doing their part and on track.

 

 2.Improvements

 •The ability to trusting others

 •I have issues with trusting others to do their part, and I try to make sure everyone gets their stuff done early so I have time to look it over and submit it myself.  I can improve this by sharing the load with others, giving them a chance to succeed, make adjustments as necessary.

 •I am also not one to take risks so I am working on being open to more ideas and to be creative while not being afraid to try; trying is part of learning and the group experience. If you do not succeed then you learn what works and what does not.

 

 3.Insights

 •There are seven deadly and seven beneficial habits to teamwork. Good (Supporting, encouraging, listening, accepting, trusting, respecting, negotiating) Bad (Criticizing, blaming complaining, nagging, threatening , punishing, bribing) Using the good techniques can improve anybody's collaborative abilities, using bad ones can hurt the teamwork experience.

Thermal Mug Design Project

The idea behind this project was to create a mug design that would cool drinks down to a nice enjoyable temperature.  We worked in a team of 4 students with a time span of roughly two weeks.

To do this we ran tests to see how a normal frozen glass mug would work for this and then brainstormed how we could improve that.

In order to test a normal glass mug we had to work on crating a math model to tell us what the final temperature should be using MATLAB, and then we also programmed an Arduino to read the temperature of the liquid.

Here is a video of what we did for testing our glass mug:

 

Below is our Arduino Set up for reading the temperature and displaying it in the LCD in both degrees C and F.

Here is our experiment set up: As you can see our data is not the best because we are not in a closed system although the jacket does help with insulation.

(Note: When I learn how to add documents I will add out Matlab and Arduino Codes as well as further information)

Gaylene Anderson Talk

This talk was very interesting and contained a lot of helpful information I hope to remember and use if I need to.

To begin with, I feel that knowing how to make a patent and the steps to go through in order to make one was very important to learn since as students we are working on projects and who knows if we might just design the next best thing and in return we might want to or need to protect our ideas in order to make money off of them.  A part of the patenting process I thought was also good to know is the concept of liscencing out product which is where other companies pay us to use our idea.  I feel that this would be a cool route to go through if I was to design a product.

I also am glad she talked about the importance of documenting everything and creating Confidentiality agreements.  I knew that if you are to talk about something that could make you or someone a lot of money, odds are people are going to try to steel the idea, and I was also not aware of the time frame you have to work with once you talk about your product before you are out of luck patenting it.  No instead of making someone sign something because you dont trust them to not steel your idea, you can say you have to do that in order to legally patent it.  This could be useful during our entire careers as Mechancial Engineers if we ever design something worthwhile.

Also lastly, something very worthwhile while a student at the University would be to patent a cool item that consumers would want because while you are a student and if it relates to your field of study, or if you did it while working with school items and proffs then you can go through the school to get your item patented.  This is very worthwhile since you dont have to pay the patent fee's or go through the hassels of submitting everything since the office Gaylene works in will take care of it for you.  In the end you still make plenty of money off of it, 40%, another 40% goes to her office so they can pay to submit more patents and such, and the last 20% goes to your college to help them out with more research.

This was a very great presentation and I learned a lot that I hope to be able to use someday.