Cosmos Recap

Cosmos was fantastic. In every way, the program was extremely beneficial to my knowledge about college and my future career choice. I feel like I have a much better understanding about college life and the life of an engineer, and thanks to Cosmos I am looking forward to both. The month I spent at UCSD is something I will never forget. The people were amazing. Everyone from the proffessors and teacher fellows to the R.A's and the students themselves made the experience at Cosmos wonderful. I couldn't have imagined a better way to spend my summer than at UCSD learning about engineering design. It's an amazing feel to know what I want to major in and knowing what engineering will actually be like when i get to college and beyond. Not many kids my age have a clue about what they want to do in college, but I have been blessed with uniwue knowledge about my chosen field. Thanks to everyone who made this past month possible, it was awesome. Cluster 2 and others, I will miss you all very much. I hope you all achieve wonderful things with your lives.

August 2

Goodbye, COSMOS and the beautiful people who made it so great. I am writing this final blog from home, where I am happy to be yet so sad. I think I have tasted what people refer to as "bittersweet". It is wonderful to be home with my family and dog, but I miss my suite, my floor, my RAs, my roommate, my friends, my teacher fellow, my professors, and UCSD. I know the biggest I have learned about colleges is that the people are the most prominent features of the school. It has been the best of times and the hardest place to leave.
Roger Chin

The Arcageon Files

I'm going to list again. One, our cluster is the best. If you're from another cluster and are reading this, no matter how much you deny it, you're lying to yourself...I'm sorry. Two, the chocolate Crunch sundae bars are definitely better than the strawberry ones Austin. Three, Roger in my cluster group is the key to all the happy and he better not get sick again or we will miss him and our structure will not work again. Four, our structure works!!! Five, we are almost done with the other things for the presentation part. Six, I'm about to go on a haunted tour. Seven, I found my music, no worries...I found it a while ago. Seven, Mr. Park is awesome. Eight, the food has been okay, with periods where it is really good and some when it is really bad.

Yesterday was really depressing. Roger got sick and had to leave, and at the end of the day our sculpture was unfinished and I had to go home and do my individual project. But today was the best day ever! Roger came back and we finished our sculpture! All it took was a morning full of soldering and making track. Our finished sculpture is fun to play with, especially since I beat Sean and Roger by getting the ball into the "money hole" the most. It was really rewarding to play with our sculpture and it definitely made up for all the boring PowerPoint I had to do. Our poster and PowerPoint are almost complete so tomorrow should not be terribly stressful. Hopefully nothing will break and our presentation will go smoothly.

Indiv. Project + Dance -Paul Deardorff

Hello everyone,

Today was a great day because we were allowed to roam around the computer lab and fabrication room to finish the final kinetic sculpture and associated presentation materials (Poster, PowerPoint, etc.). My job today was to de-bug the programs that I created because I had three separate programs from the previous Mini-sculpture and two new ones for the final sculpture. It turns out, mixing digital and analog inputs is somewhat difficult. After a lot of re-programming and testing, the errors were fixed and now the sculpture functions properly. I stayed a little later after class to upload a Working Model simulation, the poster, and export some files for home (dorm) use.

I also finished working on the Individual Proposal Assignment "Discovery Project". My subject is a man-portable, modular wind turbine system which addresses all the current issues surrounding the topic of Wind Turbines. I first started with Wind Turbine efficiency, but found the topic to be too well researched.

An except from my proposal:

"The new design of the wind turbine system includes a series of modular turbines that are environmentally friendly, cost efficient, and easily transported and maintained. The turbine system proposes several long rows of modular turbines which are placed along the ridges and valleys of mountain ranges which provide more constant wind flow. Each modular block of turbines, measuring approximately five to eight feet in height and ten to twelve feet in length would include safe propellers with “scoops” to capture the wind, a sturdy composite material frame, and a modular drive shaft. The shafts would be linked together using a ball and socket joint to allow for maneuverability over rough terrain. The large chain of drive shafts would then be hooked up to a single generator for each row and could be directly transported to the power output source."

And some diagrams from the proposal:
This diagram is a side view of the rotor assembly with the “A” arm frame supporting drive shaft which links the modules together to a single generator.
This front view of a single three propeller module shows the position of each of the rotors which are separated by “A” arm frames and connected to drive shafts.

I am very excited about the project and look forward to entering it into the $500 grant proposal so I can conduct the project.


Thanks for looking!

Cosmos is coming to an end, I am very sad, yet happy that I had a great time!

Regards,
Paul Deardorff

First Day of Final Sculptures -Paul Deardorff

Today was the first day of our final sculptures and each team made very good progress on the full sculpture. Most teams focused on the main structure, which was the main goal of the team I was working in. We decided that it would be best to just start building to allow more time to test out new ideas on the following day. I created another one of my parts on the LaserCAMM and was pleased to see that other teams were also using my infamous "Horizontal Side Servo Mount". This attaches a servo to a blue pipe horizontally and doesn't interfere with its range in motion. I also created a fan type contraption which directs balls in one of two ways, with the help of user inputs. After I had the whole portion of the structure assembled, it was time to actually mount it with a servo. This is where I used my servo mount which I had previously made. Well, it didn't fit because of a slight error in the steps of my assembly. The servo arm had to be put on last, but instead I put it on first. Instead, the servo mount would have to be cut to fit over the collar of the servo and secure with two screws and bolts. With the aid of Mr. Park on the band saw and his precision cutting hands, I was able to make a revision to the original design.

I think in the end, I will make this piece in CAD for future years of COSMOS students to use and modify the way they need it.

I am looking forward to tomorrow's discovery lecture.

Regards,

Paul Deardorff

6 more days...........

I really enjoyed the third week. My group and I completed our mini-sculpture that could switch tracks both manually (with a joystick) and automatically( with a sensor that switched the track every other time).
I tried east coast swing dancing and had a blast. It's been years since I've been to the zoo and I was able to see all the animals at the San Diego Zoo on Saturday. On Sunday, some of my friends and I swam in the ocean to an orange buoy. It was quite freaky since we were so out and open in the ocean. We also had an intense pillow fight and it was fun charging at the opposite team.
Our cluster now has just 4 days left to finish our project and my team has been making good progress. Good luck to the other teams!

Cheers!
Flaviu

Highs and Lows

I would like to say that I like Billy's riddles and I hope that he keeps them coming.

The zoo was fun as I expected. The giraffes certainly put on a show for us. My new favourite animal may now be the flamingo. The flamingos at the zoo were so chill and they looked so cool in their pink feathers.

Yesterday wasn't my best day at COSMOS. When we were supposed to meet outide for the COSMOS Family Feud at 7:45, I lost track of time and got there ten minutes late. Pat DA was visibly flustered, but she accepted my apology. Later that night, we had a pillow fight between the first two floors and the top two floors. Amidst the fray, I accidentally hit someone on the side of the face. He got mad and got his revenge by clocking me upside the head with the pillow. My glasses flew off of my face and onto the ground. I can see nothing without my glasses, so I wasn't able to find them. Luckily, my friends and suitemates helped me look for them and kept people from trampling over the area. I thank them for helping me. A suitemate found them, luckily. I hope that this and other incidents don't prevent future pillow fights from taking place. The pillow fights are great fun and it would be a shame if they couldn't continue.

Until next time
--Vivek Choksi

Final Week Reminders

Hello Cluster 2,

Here are the key "deliverables" you will produce as we enter the final week of COSMOS. The things that are due this week and plan your time accordingly:

1) Poster - should try to complete by Wednesday so that you can print it out (this usually takes a day to get back from the print shop).

2) Discovery Project Proposal - Due Thursday morning. This is your individual project to complete a proposal for a $500.00 grant to continue your adventures in kinetic sculptures.

3) Team website - Due Friday - Simply use the template from MAElabs website. All links (to your individual clocks, to your team poster, and to your team powerpoint presentation) must work and please add a team photo or two.

4) Final Kinetic Sculpture. Everything should work and work consistently with minimal (or no) marble loss.

5) PowerPoint Presentation - Due Thursday - To be presented to the whole cluster in room 312 on Friday morning. We will then vote for the first and second place teams to represent us at the awards ceremony Friday night.

Good luck and please ask if you have questions!

Mr. Park

ZOO + Fued + Food - Paul Deardorff

I had an incredible weekend. It started off with a great end to a Friday with the group presentations. I felt like I was back at the State Science Fair in 8th Grade giving my presentation to about 20 science judges and a crowd of people. It was very fun and exciting to also see the work of other teams as well. On Saturday, we went to the zoo which I had been to before when I was about 7 years old. I remembered some of the exhibits but most of them were new to me. I especially like to watch the monkeys because of their behavior which parallels the actions of humans very closely. On Sunday we went to the beach which was not as exciting because I caught up on my summer reading, but I did enjoy the change in atmosphere. After the beach, we played a game of Family Feud (or building feud) which was very fun. I enjoyed the adobe flash graphics which were fun. I tried to figure out how they were able to write the game in ActionScript 3.0. Turns out it is very simple...maybe I will make one in my free time. The boys team won, but the girls put up a good fight by winning the points that really counted.

To bring up something new, I am going to try posting a video to share! I am going to source it through HTML using an external video uploader. It is a WorkingModel demonstration of a car crash test which I made. I call it "The Preliminary Crash Tests of the Safest Car in the World"!!!



Enjoy! I will post pictures of the starting work of the final sculpture! I can't wait to get started!

Best Regards,

Paul Deardorff

The last few days have been fun, but also exasperating. We finally got our sculpture to work completely on Thursday, but then on Friday Mr. Park suggested we redo a part and that threw off the whole thing! Friday was really stressful because we were struggling to get the sculpture to work, but we fixed it in time for the presentation. Even though our sculpture wasn't working perfectly, I was still really proud to see the channel move and the sensor display "GOAL!!!!!!!." Our sculpture also looked good because it had a painted soccer field with our new name Team Random and foam soccer ball stickers. All of the teams had really impressive sculptures, I can't believe we did them all in a week. Yesterday we went to the zoo and Shelby and Maggie and I saw almost everything. I was happy that we had good timing and got to see so many things, especially the koalas moving and the two headed snake. Today has been the coldest day in a while, which is unfortunate because we went to the beach and had dinner outside. I can't believe it's our last week! I'm really glad I get to spend it building a kinetic sculpture and I know I'll have fun.

July 27

I enjoyed our further exploration of San Diego at the Zoo today. The animals all had a distinct grace that seemed to demonstrate the beauty of nature. From the soft-looking pads of the elephants to the howl of the singing dog, the characteristics of the animals were fascinating and will remain in my memory. My favorite experience at the Zoo was watching and hearing the New Guinea singing dog howl in response to the crowd's howling. I admit I was howling too. The bonocos were the only monkeys whose names I can remember. The gorillas had a very sophiscated and formal look to them. One silverback was sitting with his legs folded and his back straight while looking at his nails and peering around. Basketball was fun this morning when I got to play with a smaller group. The visit to the beach will be very relaxing, because I crave floating in the cool Pacific water.
Roger Chin

Week 3 Recap

This has been my favorite week at Cosmos by far. This week we had to build our mini sculptures and my group's turned out great. My group really worked well together and we were able to get our mini sculpture done with no problems. It's amazing what you can do with a few good ideas and a dedicated group of teenagers. We went from having nothing on Monday to a full blow ball launching sculpture by the end of the week. Here's a picture of Team 3's mini sculpture:

Our model has a rotating trampoline that can bounce balls into any of the three mounted baskets and can also move backwards to allow a ball to fall down into the fourth basket underneath. I'm so excited with the way our project turned out. This has been one of the best learning experiences because it's stress free and we are learning so much. I can't wait to begin working on the final kinetic sculpture come monday!

A Good Week

Hello. As with most of the other students, (except for Paul!) I haven't blogged in a long while, so I have some catching up to do. I don't have a laptop, so it's difficult to squeeze in time for blogging. This week we worked in teams to complete our mini-sculptures, and next week, the final sculptures will be due. The kinetic sculptures are extremely fun to work with and build because there are moving, rolling, and bouncing parts in addition to all the electrical and programming components. Now I know that if I am to become an engineer, I would probably specialize in mechanical engineering because the it's fun to see the product of hard work moving around.

It was frustrating to program in BASIC, especially since none of the four members of my team has experience programming in that particular language. We weren't quite sure which commands to use and when, and how to use them. Professor de Callafon's help was a relief, but we still ran into problems and roadblocks after that, and the machine wouldn't work the way we wanted it to. In the end, we found that the main reason why the program wasn't working was because we were using the gosub command improperly. After jumping that hurdle, the construction of our mini-sculpture went smoothly, and we even had some time to add some icing after baking the cake. ;)

Here's the website for Team SuperMario.


The activities for this past week were fun. However, I wish that they were not made mandatory. A few times before I didn't feel like participating in the eveningly activities due to homework that I needed to do and sleepiness. Talking with my brother over the phone revealed that 2005 COSMOS in UCI gave the students more freedom regarding what recreational activities they wanted to do. However, it doesn't seem like the system will change anytime soon, so I'll move on.

Yesterday we went to Calit2 on an on-campus field trip. That was even more fun than the field trip to the aerospace museum, and I recommend that Cluster 2 go on the same field trip in future years if possible. As a student and a future jobholder, it is interesting and enlightening for me to see what adults do during the day. I am always curious as to what office and working life will be like, since, as a student, I have no clue. It is also helpful for me to know these things when choosing prospective careers for myself.

Last night I went on the Haunted Tour. The best part of the tour was when we were taken to the Stairway to Hell - a graffiti room where a UCSD student named Danny Durazo died years before. Reading all of the messages that people had spraypainted onto the walls was spooky and intriguing at the same time. I wish that we had more time to spend in the stairway to explore.

Well, I look forward to the weekend and the trip to the San Diego Zoo.

Until next time,

Vivek Choksi

Randomness

So, I haven't blogged in FOREVER, it seems like. I don't even know where to start... Well, exciting things that are popping out at me are: my giftcard that I won during Bingo, my wonderfully tie-dyed shirt, and the haunted tour tonight. And of course those dang mini-sculptures that were supposed to be pretty much done today. Oh, and Cafe V has some Raspberry Lemonade that is absolutely delicious! I have an individual project that I need to get done, but its not due for a week, so I'm blogging instead. I'm really excited that we get to go to Price Center during lunch and at free time. And I can't wait to go to the Zoo!

Calit2 + Final Day -Paul Deardorff

Today was the final day for the mini-sculptures, with a little preparation time tomorrow before the presentation. There was not a lot of stress or worry in the room because most teams were very efficient and well organized in their projects. All of the teams finished the main structures and had just a little bit of last minute programming.

Our team's mini-sculpture is completely finished, including programming and the poster. As promised, I took some action pictures of the ball in motion.

This one of the ball passing through the optical sensor.


One of the ball going through the ramp.


As a special field trip, we toured the Calit2 building for one hour. We first went to a circuitry lab where they worked on robotics, communications, and data research. They had small R/C toys mounted with GPS, wireless cameras, speakers, microphones, and other data gathering instruments. The designs were fairly simple and mostly stock, but the equipment used was more complex. We also saw an amazing 3D CNC milling machine.

We then traveled to a wall of Dell lcd monitors. It was amazing and the possibilities for using the technologies were endless. It was impressive enough to even draw the attention of several Google representatives who were inspecting the display.

Here is a picture:
Each set of four Dell monitors was hooked up to a single Dell XPS system which was then controlled by a single computer to divide up the monitor display.

I was very happy that we were able to have this field trip on special request of the cluster! It was definitely worth the time out of class because I really enjoyed it.

Best Regards,

Paul Deardorff

More Programming! -Paul Deardorff

Today was another great day of working on our mini-Kinetic Sculpture project. My main focus for the team was autoCAD and BASIC (programming). This is the area which I am most comfortable in, but I also help in building and design because it is always good to help out with a little bit of everything. Having never used Basic before, I had to just jump in and try and work things out. After a lot of testing, re-coding, guessing, and LOTs of help from the professors and teacher assistants, my program is almost where I want it to be for Friday, the big presentation. The main problem with my programming was that it was actually controlling physical actions and commands performed by various sensors and motors. As we know, occurances in the "real world" do not always happen as they do on a computer. Most of my programming experience is in languages like HTML and JAVA which are very different from Basic. I, however, really enjoyed working with this new language because it was interesting to physically see the code and instructions to be performed in real time which I had just written on the computer. After some work in the lab, we had a very informative lecture on presenting, teamwork, and organization. Eventually, we will be making a poster board for the mini Sculpture with annotated pictures/diagrams to convey our projects and explain the challenges faced with creating them. One of the most important ideals in engineering/science (and also other fields) is presenting becasue that is what makes you heard in the real world. If a project you are working on is not communicated or documented properly, it will be of no use to other researchers in that field. The type of work we are doing in our cluster will be very important to each one of us in our future career and life activities. We ended the day with some fun activities. I just walked around and observed each one because I had some summer reading to finish.

Some pictures from today's lab work:


Our team's mini-Sculpture in its almost current status. Some rebuilding required for the joystick module and mount. You can see the new mount hot off the LaserCAMM in the far right of the picture.
Some testing of the ball ramp done by the careful hands of Harsh.
Me inspecting the equipment and noticing a need for a new joystick mount! Luckily, I have autoCADD, a LaserCAMM, and a full machine shop all in the same building (almost same room!)

After a new design, some measurements (thanks KJ for help with that!), a little drilling, and 4.67 minutes on the Lasercamm, our team has a new mount!

Thanks for looking!

Paul Deardorff

P.S. - Tomorrow I will take some action shots of all these pieces put together. I will try to get the ball rolling through the ramp as well.

boohoo.

I've been having such bad luck today. The only things that went well were 1) I'm getting close to finishing Bowser on AutoCAD, and 2) I'm pretty much done with the clock webpage.

And now, on to the bad stuff.

So first, the safety for Gotcha today was holding hands with 2 other people. It isn't that hard, but it's quite tedious. In the midst of walking to/from class/ERC, I lost 1)my hair tie, and 2) the back of my cell phone (the part where you open to get your battery out). I really really really want to find the latter. There were also multiple occasions when I could've gotten the person I'm trying to get for Gotcha, but I was either too slow or holding hands with other people. grrrr.... It seems like both the person that is after me and the person I am trying to get are following me around, which frightens me a bit. Oh, and also, one of the girls who lives directly above my room (someone on the 3rd floor) wakes up at like 6:30ish every morning and is quite loud. Her stomping and slamming of the drawers are quite audible, as the walls here at ERC are quite thin.

On a lighter note, last night's karaoke was fun, but there were soo many people. Props to all the clusta 2 peeps who sang Bohemian Rhapsody, we totally made all the other clusters jealous ;)

Food Recap:

Yesterday Breakfast: Breakfast quiche, average.

Lunch: Pot Roast/Egg noodles/steamed veggies- I really enjoyed this meal. The meat was quite tender and flavorful, and steamed veggies are always my favorite. The egg noodles were normal, so overall it was pretty good

Dinner: Pulled Chicken Tacos - Pretty good as well. The guacamole had a nice garlicky flavor, not too overpowering, which was nice.

Today Breakfast: Waffles: No, I didn't have the make-it-yourself Belgian ones (there was a long line), today they served square Eggo-ish waffles. They were alright. They lacked in the crisp outer part.

Lunch: Salmon/Green Bean Casserole/Steamed Veggies- Salmon-good. Green Bean Casserole-beans could have been a bit fresher, but I'm just picky. Steamed Veggies-good. Not overdone.

Oh, and there was also the fire alarm/drill/false alarm, which was less panicky that you might imagine--some people even brought their food outside to eat.

Dinner: Lamb: the flavors were good, but the meat was tough. It would've been better if the texture was more light the pot roast....

The Arcageon Files

First of all, thank you Roger. Second of all, I haven't blogged in a while. Third of all, our group is awesome. Fourth of all, four is a bad number. Fifth of all, it has been fun working on the kinetic sculptures although some parts are frustrating. So far, everything is going fine, but we'll see. We watched the Batman movie the other day and went to the mall. It was nice getting away from the dorm area for awhile, even if we didn't go too far. My music went missing, so if anyone finds a navy blue beat-up looking folder that is not even attached down the middle spine, please give it back to Shelby Yokote or turn it into the office. There will probably be music sheets inside of it and that is all that I am missing. Nothing much to anyone except me because I love my music and ate a whole Hershey bar when I realized it was missing. Being hungry had nothing to do with it.
The food has been okay, though dinner the other night was meager to say the least. I think I went with pizza because Cafe V actually makes pretty good pizzas. BRING BACK THE WANTONS!!!

Yesterday was a momentous day. Shelby and I used the $100,000 lasercamm all by ourselves! Now we use it all the time and it is no big deal. Our kinetic sculpture is coming along well and we have made almost all of the parts we needed with AutoCAD and the lasercamm. We created a very useful clamp after 4 trials and now other groups want to use our clamp design. To bad we can't sell it. We have encountered and overcome many problems, including making a tunnel, floor, program and more. Currently, we are working on getting the sensor to say, "goal" and readjusting the floor for the sensor. Also, I got my prize from the photo scavenger hunt yesterday so now I can go get free jamba juice at the Price Center. To cap off yesterday, cluster 2 did an amazing rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody at karaoke night.

July 22

It is sobering to think that COSMOS is more than half way completed. I am amazed by the people I have met and the new things I learn about them everyday. In our group project, we are beginning to feel the tension as we have to adjust and compromise to reach our goal. It is hard to split up tasks and trust my teammates and force myself not to look over their shoulders, but I have realized that all my teammates are very talented and focused on the project. We are beginning to see the shape of the soccer game we are building. Building the track was very frustrating and tiring, but Sean was able to find all the ways to get it done. Meanwhile, Marisa and Shelby used a process of elimination to find the right clamp to hold the motor for the servo arm. I found that I could cut the foamcore fairly well, but understanding and seeing the computer code for the microprocessor is proving to be a much bigger challenge. I look forward to more challenges tomorrow.
Roger Chin

Back to COSMOS! -Paul Deardorff

After an incredibly refreshing family visitation weekend, I am back and ready to start where I left off at COSMOS! Today was a great day, we worked out some more programming issues and building problems the first part of the morning on our Mini-Kinetic Sculptures. I learned some new programming techniques such as sub-routines, more on FOR loops, and also some digital/analog inputs. I was able to implement a control stick for the kinetic sculpture. Maybe I will post a video of it later when it is finished. After lunch, we had a fun lecture on the physics of a ball dropping where you find the distance from the point of release and the point in which the ball hits the ground with a constant X velocity and linear increasing speed in the Y direction. We then put this theory to test by doing some lab experiment/calculations in the lab room. It turns out the theory is proven! (maybe it should become a law). With a minimal error (I calculated 20%) the data was fairly accurate, but had many uncontrolled factors (friction, movement, etc.).

I have some more pictures from today.

Some programming, which was the job I was mainly focusing on. The command [12] clears the LCD screen and [13] skips to the next line. We also learned servos, digital/analog inputs, optical sensors, and good programming practices.


Some testing on the Kinetic Sculpture: (I need to adjust my shutter speed!)


Also,

A new update to the websites of COSMOS is up. Most of the team pages are up.

Here is my page which I just finished hand-coding in Notepad using HTML: (very tiring!)

http://www.maeprojects.ucsd.edu/cosmos/summer2008/team1/

and also the navigation page for all of the teams:

http://www.maelabs.ucsd.edu/cosmos/teams/index.html

Thanks for looking and enjoy~!

Paul Deardorff

P.S.- I can't wait for the discovery lecture tomorrow! Its going to be great!

Family Weekend

Last weekend was when at least 90 out of the 150 kids here get to go home for the weekend. Of course, I was one of those 50.

I sat in my car for at least 2 hours since I live in the High Desert. Before I saw my house again, I went to Buena Park again for my Godmother's niece's birthday. You could say that since me and my older brother are the only teenagers there, it wasn't that exciting.

On Sunday, I simply do what I always do; Wake up, go to church, and prepare more stuff I'll need when I get back.

My weekend wasn't that exciting like some others, but at least I stayed with my family for more than 24 hours. :)

Week 3

This is Albert. I haven't made it a habit to blog, but I'll try.

Wow, week three. I can't believe that we made it that far already. Felt like yesterday since I even came to UCSD. Funny, huh?

For cluster 2, this week, we'll be working on Kinetic sculptures full on. For many who don't know what a kinetic sculpture is, you can think of the numerous rolling ball sculptures you'd normally see at a museum entrance, or in the lobby. The only difference between those, and ours is that we will add microprocessors to add motors and other stuff to our sculptures. Things are starting to get fast-paced. I woundn't be suprised if I'll look at this experience some years later, and still be suprised time went fast.

GOTCHA!

Today has been an interesting day.

Although the safety for Gotcha was kinda of weird, I managed to eliminate my person on my way to class. How it happened was actually quite peculiar and just a lot of luck. She happened to not be her safety, and I caught a glimpse of her as our cluster gathered on Middle Earth...

This morning during class we worked a bit on our mini sculptures, and I was also able to draw out a rough sketch of how our final kinetic sculpture looks like, although it is a very, very rough sketch. With Scott's help, we managed to connect our motor for our pulley to a relay which connected to the processor. Soldering the wires was pretty cool, and it was interesting to see it all come together. In the afternoon, we had a lecture which led us to the lab that we did. That was pretty fun as well, except our team sort of just burst into song during the middle of the lab..... For the trampoline part, we had major issues putting it together, but then Jason came to help us, and we were saved! I'm excited about the 'Bowser Zone' that we are attempting to include in our kinetic sculpture! Hopefully it will turn out okay..

Two other things that I am excited about are 1) Bingo, tonight and 2) the Discovery Lecture tomorrow. For the first one, I just really like to play Bingo. As for the latter, the topic tomorrow (Sustainability) is something that I have always been interested in and have actually done some research in. Perhaps I'll blog about the Dis. lecture tomorrow...

Food Recap:

Breakfast: Chocolate Chip Pancakes!  My favorite breakfast item so far, second to the waffles.

Lunch: Thai Chicken Wrap: It guess it was supposed to be cold, but I wished it were warm....

Dinner: Chicken Cordon Bleu: c'etait tres bien, mais je pense que la viande etait un peu bizarre.

Donc, Je les donne 4 etoiles/5

AU revoir!

week 3

Cluster 2 is so cool. I'm so glad i'm apart of this cluster. Today we just got to use our imaginations and build things. Building the kinetic sculptures really lets you be creative and you also can learn a lot. We learn about programming and the extend of possibilities of the parts we are given and we are challenged to push those boundaries. This is what it is really like to be an engineer so i'm looking forward to a career where i can get hands on and build whatever comes to mind. I can't wait for the challenges that await in the coming two weeks.

I have really enjoyed this week at COSMOS. We have completed all the work on the pendulum clocks and are now working with our newly formed groups on the mini-sculptures. Assembling the sculpture pieces are a lot of fun since you can make a wide ranged and complex system of tracks and it looks really cool as the ball moves through the track. Programming the micro-processors was very interesting and it's neat how you can control the start time, pause time, angle of movement, and the text screen of the micro-processor. The Cluster 2 staff and faculty are extremely helpful, knowledgeable, and resourceful.
I learned salsa dancing on Wednesday and the dance on Friday was really fun and intense. Yesterday I saw Batman Begins and today I saw The Dark Knight. The new Batman movies are among the best of the superhero movies. I'm really glad my parents brought my loud boom-box. Looking forward to the next week.

Cheers!
Flaviu

how time flies.

I can't believe it's already the beginning of week 3! This past week went by super fast, and it seems like I've been at San Diego forever (although it's only been 2 weeks...) We've started working on our mini-sculpture, and I am extremely excited about it! Hopefully, it will work, as it is a crucial part to our kinetic sculpture. We also started on our clock webpages, which look kind of empty so far, but perhaps in a few days they will become updated and filled with beautiful pictures/videos.

One of the nights last week, I painted henna tattoos on myself and some of my suitemates. I was using two different pens, so some of them turned out pretty dark but other ones are fading away. My favorite one is the watch that I painted on my wrist. Because of this "new watch," I've stopped wearing my old one. I also have spirals, some weird vines, sun/seagull/waves/fish seascape thing, and P and M on my ankles to represent my suite (Peppa-mint!) I really like that activity because I like to doodle, and it gave me the perfect chance to draw on myself.

On Friday, we had the scavenger hunt and the dance. The scavenger hunt made me feel like I was on the Amazing Race (one of my fave shows). It was quite amusing because our team just approached random people that we saw and asked them if they knew where things were. We flagged down this guy in a golf-cart and asked him for directions, and he was one of the two more helpful people that we encountered. If only he could have given us a ride! Spending an hour running around campus and discovering new things was quite fun, and sweaty.

The dance was alright. There was just this clump in the middle of the danceflo. Unfortunately, the music went haywire on us, so it just became a nice chit-chat time.

Saturday, my roomie left me. :( I somewhat like having less people around, because it just makes everything so much more laid-back. Going to the mall was fun, but I wish we had more time to browse. After that, we went to the cliffs and half-watched a beautiful sunset. Then, we played some volleyball back at the ERC green. My arms are sore from not playing in such a long time.

Today, we went to go see BATMAN: the dark knight. It was amazingly good (and a bit scary...). The Joker was a freakishly scary character, but there were some humorous parts as well--like the 'you complete me' part.

Now, the roomie and I are working on our stuff in our suite. It's nice to have everyone back. It's definitely returned to the usual sound-level.

Food Recap:
The most memorable meal was today's dinner. 1) It was good, and 2) I'm too tired to give a play-by-play on the other days/meals

Dinner: we had a London Broil, which is basically like steak. In my opinion, it was cooked just right. Some people don't like to see any red, and some like their meat to be all bloody, but today's was nice. Pinkish, but no blood gushing. The simple seasoning complimented the meat. The baked potatoes were good, too. Some surf camp just came today, so hopefully Cafe V isn't just making good food on the first day that groups arrive. Please, oh please.

Peace out,
Joyce

Officially, we we do not have to blog anymore. However, last week I wrote this blog and never posted it, so here it is:

Wow, I can’t believe it’s already Thurday! I havent’t blogged since Monday, so I have a lot to talk about. On Tuesday we had a Discovery Lecture about stem cells which was really interesting and informative. Larry Goldstein did a good job of giving us an understanding of the topic without being to political. After lunch Shelby and I were early so we got to help Professor de Callafon fill up water balloons. Later we launched these water balloons to learn about horizontal and vertical motion. It was fun, but we were not very accurate and we never hit the target. We also did experiments with a soda bottle rocket and rubber balls, which were also fun and informative. It was much better to be playing outside than to listen to lectures. At night we watched Anchorman, which was kind of stupid. On Wednesday we got our first taste of the kinetic sculpture as we assembled the basic structures. Our group worked well together and we found ways to communicate such as naming obscure parts after teammates. The useful clips are now Shelby’s. It was difficult to construct the kinetic sculpture based on a picture, but we succeeded and I was really proud when I watched the balls whiz down the track. In the afternoon we did experiments, and we got an 80% error! This was sad until we found out the expected error was in the 90’s so we actually did well. I hope we get better photogates with less error. Anyways, I have to go. Hopefully our webpage will be up soon.

Home Sweet Home

"Home, home again
I like to be here when I can."
-"Time", by Pink Floyd

Unlike Pink Floyd, luckily, I come home fresh and rejuvenated rather than "cold and tired". I don't feel like I've even left, really.

"And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death"

It makes me a bit sad that COSMOS is half over already. I feel like I could stay in Cluster 2 for months more. Maybe that's what college will be like, but that's probably wishful thinking.

I have to leave here in half an hour to go to the airport.
"The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say."

Until next time,
--Vivek Choksi
P.S. What a timeless band with excellent music and unbelievable lyrics. It's a pity that they're not as popular as they used to be...

Family Weekend

So, I didn't leave for the weekend. Yesterday we got to go to the mall, which was fun because it's an outdoor mall, combining the best of both worlds (shopping, and being outside in great weather). I didn't buy much, but I got a Rubik's Cube because I want learn how to solve one, and there are plenty of people here that know how to solve them. Yesterday was really relaxing. I decided to stay instead of going to the movie today, so I don't have any plans. 13 sleeps left =]

Friday and Family Visitation Weekend -Paul Deardorff

Friday was a great day because we were able to learn some basic values of a good team and how a team works. This information was very helpful because we were beginning to start working in a team on our kinetic sculpture group projects. Having been previously familiarized with the kits the day before, we were able to begin work building the mini-sculpture and begin learning the code language BASIC for the microprocessor control boxes. I had never worked with Basic language before, but it seemed to hold pretty true to its name, so far at least! Our first objectives were to test the LCD screen on the processor, initiate several motor servos, and finally use sensors to print messages on the LCD screen. I also wrote a program which moves a servo and tells the user the position of the servo on the LCD screen. For example, LCD: Position of servo: 500 or -500. We also created while loops and if statements to represent some basic logic.

After a fun day of classes, we were able to go to a nice dance on the roof / balcony adjacent to Cafe Ventanas. The dance was fun and the sound system / "DJ Booth" was fun to observe. It unfortunately went under some difficulties with the computer and speaker interface, but that was towards the end. I was not planning on dancing, but was eventually pulled in and it turned out to be not as bad as I thought it would be. I will see about the next dance that I hear is the last week.

And today, which I was really looking forward to was family visitation weekend. I was picked up at 10:30 A.M. in front of the dorm building. I was sad to realize that I had to part with my lanyard for the weekend. It felt awkward not wearing it for a couple of hours. After I was checked out, my family and I searched out the nearest coffee/bookstore on the UCSD campus. It turned out the Price Center was the perfect place. There was a place called "Perks" where I sat with my family to open several packages that had arrived while I was gone and to talk with my family all about COSMOS. I told them all of the fun stories that I had and about all the interesting information I learned during the many lectures / activities.

The packages were full of trains that I had purchased via Ebay during my time at COSMOS. My hobby is buying/selling pre-WWII Marklin antique trains. I did surprisingly well on my purchases, given limited internet time. I actually acquired some of my nicest pieces while at COSMOS.

I took a picture to share!:

The large black/red locomotive (+tender) is especially rare being it is from 1934 and I have only found two instances in which they have sold in the past few years. The engineering of these German trains is exquisite, and they were all designed without the assistance of Working Model or CAD!!!

Thanks for looking,

I hope everyone has a great weekend, I hear COSMOS planned some fun activities for those who stayed. The Batman movie being one of them, I saw it today and it was excellent. I can't wait to get back and talk about it with my friends.

Enjoying my time with my family, but also looking forward to getting back into Cosmos!

Best Regards,

Paul Deardorff

Food for Thought

Hello Cluster 2,

As we enter the second half of the program and move into group work with kinetic sculptures, I thought I would give you some websites to inspire and also some online tools that might help.


Dr. Delson mentioned Laser Sailboats as a good example of a successfully realized design concept. The idea was to build a high performance sailboat that was easy to transport and reasonably affordable for the masses. The link to the site is:
http://www.lasersailing.com/disp/uk/home/introduction

He also mentioned the famous "skunkworks"...here is a link to learn more:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skunk_works

Here are some more links to companies that are related to aerospace engineering, fast electric cars and robot dogs:
http://www.avinc.com/
http://www.teslamotors.com/
http://www.bostondynamics.com/

In addition, KJ let me know about two cool (and free) resources that might be helpful to you as you work on your clock web pages. Google Sketchup ( http://sketchup.google.com/ )is a 3D rendering program and NVU ( http://www.nvudev.com/index.php ) is a webpage development tool. Thanks KJ!

If you find useful tools or websites please let me know or post them in your blogs.

By the way - awesome blogs - keep up the good work!

Mr. Park

July 17

It seems from the common consensus that Thursdays are the best weekdays, because of the shorter classes and the larger variety along with the pool time. I now have the power as the Webmaster of our group for the kinetic sculpture. The HTML was a little hard to figure out, so I will need to learn more of that computer language or to get a program. I managed to get our webpage set up with two of the links to our clocks. The college talk was helpful, especially with the panel of 26 year-olds. They seemed very personable and willing to look back on their past. I always wonder about what lies in the future. To the future!
Roger Chin

Thursday, July 17

Today we are writing up a Web page for our final documentation of the clocks. I have not really made a Web page before, so this will be very interesting for me. We have pretty much finished the construction of our clocks, and we have just formed groups for our final project, a kinetic sculpture. I am excited to work with my group, and I know that this will be a great team experience for me.

More later...

Austin

Time Flies

I can't believe that today is already Thursday of the second week. Somehow, today feels unreal because I keep on thinking that I've only arrived at COSMOS. During the past few days, we've finished our pendulums and begun our new project, the kinetic sculptures. I've enjoyed listening to the lectures about the basic physics principles behind the sculptures along with experimenting with different properties such as shooting a rocket and water balloons. :D The best part of the water balloons was shooting them at the EBU II building which we hit the third floor windows.

Yesterday, we spent the whole day playing with the chaos kit and seeing how the pieces work. I can't wait to see how our final project will turn out because our group has already came up with marvelous ideas. :D

Last night, I played poker during the activity time. I won third place (out of 7) because I didn't really know how to play. It was quite exciting to play, but I definitely don't think that poker would be my future career. :P

Anyway, right now, in class, we are working on the website documentation for our pendulum. I think it's time for me to go back to work. :D

Hi guys! So today we are in the computer lab for science communication. We are working on the website for our pendelum clocks, which is okay. I'm just glad we don't have a lecture this morning because I've been pretty tired lately and it's getting easier and easier to nod off during class. It's not that the lectures aren't interesting, I just don't think that first thing in the morning is the best time to have them. Well, yesterday class was really fun. We got to do 3 different labs, one launching bottle rockets, one dropping balls form the engineering building, and one throwing water balloons. The best lab was definitely the water balloon one. Professor de Callafan is pretty chill, and he let us try to launch a balloon over EBU2. We ended up just hitting a window, but whatever. :) The activities were pretty fun yesterday, too. Salsa dancing was cool, and I'm kinda excited for ice blocking tonight. Bye bye.

Our Amazing Cluster

Yesterday we watched Anchorman during movie night. I didn't enjoy the movie; the jokes were unintelligent and blunt. I am glad I finally saw the movie, because I had been wanting to see it for some time due to recommendations from several friends, but the movie was a disappointment.

I read some of the blogs from Cluster 1 and I think that they are well-written and well-thought out. I, however, have more to praise than to criticize. I am very happy with cluster two. Starting out, I got a little lost in some of Professor DeCallafon's lectures, but now I understand the concepts of derivatives and I am able to follow most of the material covered in the lecture. Never having taken a physics class in the past, I am now finding physics and dynamics one of the most compelling areas of science that I have ever explored. I am intrigued by the marriage of mathematics and science, something I didn't see very often in last year's biology class. The labs were great because they applied all the science that we learned. I wish that we had more time to spend on them. Today we started building with the kinetic sculpture kits. They turned out to be easy to use, and it was fun to see the different parts work in harmony. As Flaviu mentioned in the meeting with Mr. Tu and Ms. Hames, COSMOS - Cluster 2 in particular - is the perfect balance of fun and learning. I'm loving it.

Until next time
--Vivek Choksi

July 16

Today was a first time setting up for the group kinetic sculpture. Our group learned to adapt and deal with problems with contribution from each person. Marissa, Shelby, and Sean are all funny and cool kids. We each picked up our responsibilities without assignment, which was nice. Dr. De Callafon gave us a nice lecture to catch up on rotational kinetic energy and the differences between rolling and slipping balls at various angles. I look forward to the campus tour and college application lecture. See you tomorrow morning.
Roger Chin

hello, again.

We pretty much spent the whole day building/playing around/testing the kinetic sculptures, with a few lectures here and there. It was pretty nice. We achieve a nice balance of lectures and hands-on activities here at clusta 2. Building the kinetic sculptures got frustrating at times because we had a hard time finding the parts in the bins, or the parts were broken. After today, I must say that the loop de loops are evil. They look cool, but they are tricky, tricky little pieces of plastic that do not cooperate... grr. On a lighter note, during the afternoon we tested the sensors, and our group was able to finish the worksheets, so that was a relief. It's funny how it took us soooo long to assemble the sculptures but it only took us like five minutes to take them apart.

Food Recap:
Breakfast: The usual stuff, except today they had potatoes with cheese/rosemary/onions/other stuff. that was okay/good.
Lunch: French Dip Sandwich-pretty good, it was an enjoyable lunch, except I wish that they toasted the bread for the sandwich--that would make it even better.
Dinner: Pineapple Chicken, Kahluah Pork w/ Cabbage, Teriyaki Zucchini and coconut rice
Pineapple Chicken--I don't know.... I wasn't a big fan of this.... I don't know if it was supposed to be like that or what, but the meat was quite shredded and it didn't really taste like chicken..... The pineapple didn't really help the flavor either.
Kahlua Pork w/ Cabbage: This was much better than the chicken. The texture was a lot better, the meat was quite tender and still intact, and the flavors somewhat worked.
Teriyaki Zucchini--I'm a big fan of the zucchini, and I love grilled veggies, but I don't like eating anything that is excessively black, which is what my zucchini turned out to be. So, I ended up picking off the excessively blackened areas and the zucchini turned out to be quite good.
Coconut Rice--Okay. I know they are trying to go with the 'tropical' theme, but they really shouldn't name it something that it doesn't taste like. Let's face it, the coconut rice today was really just white rice. There was no resemblance of coconut in there... Maybe they named it 'coconut rice' because the insides of coconuts are white, but the name is just misleading. People will think that the rice will have a coconut flavor or will have coconut in it--both of which are false.

Today I realized that for quite a few days now, I've been having either the chocolate cake or the brownies for dessert. What struck me as peculiar was that it seemed like I was having perhaps stuff from the same batch :O over and over again. I mean, they have had the same cupcakes at lunch for two or three days now.... so I tend to avoid them...

Luckily, as I was waiting for my suitemates to get ice cream today at dinner, I saw one of the chefs bring out a large pan of brownies and place them onto the plate. Phew. That was a close one.

Nonetheless, my strategy from now is that I won't be having any dessert that I've seen the day before.... just to be on the safe side ;)

Peace out,
Joyce

Hello there blog readers!

So,
Monday night:
Activity: Cake Decorating. WAY FUN! And my group won! The best thing was the prize, which was a ride to...
Tuesday morning:
The Discovery Lecture! A RIDE!! That's 15 minutes I DIDN'T have to walk! How outstanding! And it gets better. After my wonderful ride, I was sitting in the front, listening to Larry Goldstein discuss facts about, and his views on Stem Cell Research. That lecture was great, especially because I have an interest in the topic. After the Discovery Lecture, it was time for class, which wasn't too bad either. We then had lunch, which we're always a tad late too because class is so interesting and lunch is so far away. After lunch we did outdoor activities. YAY SUN! I started at the rocket one with Mr. Park, which started funny after the rocket backfired and spewed water all into his face. Then, I did the ball dropping 'lab' with Scott and Jason, which was also fun. My last activity was the water balloon one with Prof. de Callafon ( I think that's how it's spelt), that was really funny, really really funny. With the last water balloon, we managed to hit the highest window on the front of EBUII. Then we had a mandatory Science Buddies lecture to attend, which was a slight bummer because it meant no free time, but it all worked out because they gave us M&M's, oh yeah, and some pretty cool information on science fair competitions. Our activity last night was watching a movie, well known as Anchorman, which was just as I expected it to be, stupid funny, but I like stupid funny.
Wednesday!
This morning we had a bit of a lecture, then got to play with the kinetic sculptures. It was really fun, and I was proud of my group because we all worked together. After lunch, we did some experiments with parts of the kinetic sculpture sets, which was cool, but I'm positive something went wrong experimentally because our numbers were way off. Tonight I'm going to play poker, and have fun.
PS: I wish that Cafe V had jello as a dessert, I've been craving it since the jello fight Sunday...

Wednesday

Yesterday i didnt get a chance to write anything but i still want to mention that i loved the discovery lecture. The speaker really conveyed the idea that stem cell research is at the forefront of scientific research and that new things are being discovered every day. I always knew about the importance of stem cells but i never knew the biology behind them and where they came from or all of the scientific names. He was a tremendous speaker and he never spoke in scientifc language that we could not understand. I also found his background really interesting how he started his career studying fruit flies and then went on to brain research and only in the last 10 years did he get involved in stem cell research. After that we went to a lecture about science buddies which is a website database which helps students find project ideas. I was extremely exhausted but i found the talk overall very interesting. When i found out the project of the girl who spoke to us i was very surprised because i had talked about doing a similar project with algae and antibiotics a couple of years ago with my biology teacher.

Today also went pretty well. We started the day off with a morning lecture and then we were able to finish up our pendulums and we got to construct kinetic sculptures for the first time. It was really helpful to see the materials that we will be working with in order to better help us come up with our designs for our miniature sculptures and then finally our final sculpture. I was relieved today to find that we didn't have that much homework and that we will be given the opportunity to work in the computer lab with one of our TA's. I love this cluster and i am not as stressed out as the other students which is making my COSMOS experience much more enjoyable.

July 15

Today was a flurry of blurred events. Right after breakfast, Larry Goldstein had a very informative lecture on stem cell while mostly staying away from the heated politics surrounding it. I enjoyed hearing from a scientist what a stem cell does and the latest work done on the research. It is fascinating to watch so many new changes in science be made in such short time. After lunch, I was involved in the three labs, studying gravitational potential energy, collisions, trajectory, and kinetic energy. The labs were also fun with the water balloon launching, the water rocket shooting, and the balls bouncing. The mixture of both fun and learning was ideal. See you tomorrow.
Roger Chin

Tuesday - More Fun! - Paul Deardorff

Today was another amazing day. We started off our morning with another great Discovery Lecture from Dr. Goldstein who presented his information, research, and thoughts on the topic of Stem Cells and Stem Cell research. He was very good at speaking, and was able to know the audience really well because you could tell he adjusted his presentation to fit the needs of the audience. He started off the presentation explaining the over all topic of Stem Cell research, first in a broad sense as simply being cells and then in a much more specific way. He then slowly moved into the purpose of Stem Cells in the body and how they can help to cure many diseases as well as advance the field of Regenerative Medicine. It was interesting to see his point of view as a laboratory researcher instead of the media's point of view which is not always accurate. However, it is always important to take into consideration both sources. His presentation inspired me to continue my own personal research and understanding of Stem Cells and the possibilities that the future may hold. He made it very clear to the audience, being the future scientists of the world that it is our role to continue the research which others have already started.

After the lecture, class began and among other things, we did three physics experiments in only one day! These included water balloon launching (demonstrating projectile motion and velocity), water rocket firing (similar to balloons but tethered with 20 gauge wire), and finally observing the tendencies of a bouncing ball with varying air densities, shapes, materials, and elasticities. Each lab had a wonderful worksheet full of fun equations and data tables with lots of math problems!

We ended the day with a movie called Anchorman which was an average movie, but still enjoyable. I was luckily able to get some Rubik's Cube practice in although it was difficult to see the colors when the lights turned off halfway through the movie.

The very well equipped (and clean!) MAE Design Studio. My favorite tools are the two Dewalt drills and the two very large drill presses!

Thanks for reading!

Best Regards,

Paul Deardorff

Mini-labs

I thought the labs we did this afternoon were a lot of fun. I especially enjoyed the water balloon lab because we got to fire them out of a sling. After we finished collecting our data we tried to hit a big target drawn in chalk from about 150 feet away. I think I misunderstood the instructions somewhere along the line because I ended up standing on the bullseye watching the rest of my group load the sling. I was actually sort of happy to be the target because it was really hot out, but unfortunately we completely missed the target with all three of our shots. I think we get to finish our clocks tomorrow after everyone finishes. I still need to touch up the paint on mine and do some final assembly.

good humor

Today was quite fun. In the morning we had our second Discovery Lecture. The guy who was presenting was Larry Goldstein. He had a very nice presentation and it was interesting and well-rehearsed. He had a good sense of humor as well.

Then, we had our science communications class, which was cool. We saw some of the ppts from Mr. Park's physics class and he pointed out the things that his class discovered and also told us what to do/not do on ppts. That was pretty interesting.

In the afternoon, we had LAB TIME--the best part of the day. We had three lab stations: Rocket/Bottle launching, Ball Drop, and launching water balloons. All three of them were really really fun. It was nice to be able to do more hands on stuff. On the ball drop, I was the dropper, and I was able to hit directly on the cross section of the 'X' which made me feel good about myself. The water balloon launch was also pretty fun. Professor de Callafon is cool. Let's just say that the people talking on cell phones should be glad that we were preoccupied when they walked by, and hopefully no one was in the room that we were eating lunch in yesterday.... haha

Food Recap:
Breakfast: French Toast-so far my favorite breakfast item.
Lunch: Cheese Maricotti w/ meat sauce-pretty good
Dinner: My prayers have finally been answered! We had, oh yes, boneless, skinless chicken. no joke. that was shweeettt.

So, with that said, I give it a.... drum roll please....... 4/5!

Hello Cluster 2,

Once again it is really great to hear of your experiences both inside and outside the classroom. My strongest impression of you ALL from the first week is that admire your tenacity - the ability to persevere in light of challenges (trying to get multiple programs to play nice together, etc.). Seeing how well you worked on both the building and timing analysis of the clocks I am really looking forward to watching your mini sculptures evolve over the next couple of weeks. You will begin to see how all of the skills you gained during the clock project will help as you design and "modify" your kinetic structures. 

I was a little surprised at how quiet you guys were during lunch with Dr. Tu and Mrs. Hames. Some of you talked about that in your blog. Others...what was up with that? 

Discovery lecture today and outdoor physics activities! More later.

the beginning of week 2/end of week 1

YO! The clock is finally done, AND it actually works quite well. I was a bit worried about it because I was afraid that the top middle part of the pendulum was going to hit the escapement wheel and get stuff, but everything worked out in the end, and I didn't have to shave off part of my pendulum.

TOday:
First we went to the comp lab to work on the working model thingy to simulate how our pendulum would swing. The approximation that I got on working model for one revolution was about 10.6 seconds, which was really close to what I got for the actual pendulum. The actual time was about .1 to .2 off. That was pretty much all we did during the morning because some people were still working on the CADs (I think) and working with Working Model was quite frustrating at times, and it took a long time to get the hang of it/actually make the pendulum swing on it. Nonetheless, everyone was really helpful, so I got it to work in time.

Lunch:
We ate with Professor Tu and Ms. Hames on the top floor of the building. The view was quite nice, and it felt good to get a bit of individual attention. I'm glad to hear that even though we might not be going on any more far away fieldtrips, we will most likely be having short excursions around campus. Those sound pretty fun, and I am definitely looking forward to them.

Afternoon:
We went back to the MAE design studio and worked on our clocks. I was having trouble with the last part of my clock, but I got some help from my fellow clustamates, and I finally finished! Then, I repainted parts of the pendy because now we have a wider selection of paints, and I was able to mix some interesting colors. Professor de Callafon (haha, this sounds kinda like Harry Potter.... ish) gave another lecture about the dynamics of simple mechanical systems. It was pretty easy to understand, probably becuase we already had a lecture before about it.... and again, I enjoyed the working model stuff on it, because it made the ppt more clear, and they are fun/cool to look at.

Sunday:
Laundry, kind of a hassle, but it wasnt that bad. I need to find a better time to go there, though. That would be better. Maybe I should go during.... (I won't disclose the specific time here, because that wouldn't be so secret, and perhaps other people will go there during that time, too, which would make my roomie mad. no joke)
Beach-fun, although I thought that the water would be much warmer compared to the beaches in norcal..... although i must admit it's still a lot better than norcal.
Jell-O fight- FUN times a googleplex. The consistency was weird, but it kinda made it more fun, in a way. My suitemates and I made a pact to hit everyone else but each other, but ONE of them *ahem* hit me 5 times, which was not cool, yo.

Saturday:
Knott's: Crazy fun, but the car ride there and back was a bit long, compared to the Irvine kids whose ride was only half an hour and got there at 12:30.... but I guess it was just more bonding time for us ;)


Food Recap:
Today lunch: boxed lunch. I had a salami sandwich and fritos and grandma's chocolate chip cookies, and cranberry juice-the best.
Today dinner: tilapia: it was decent. BUT the vegetarian pasta thing was extremely bland.... I'm not quite sure if we were supposed to add the salt ourselves or what... but i dunno... it just didn't have a taste
Yesterday Lunch: Cheese ravioli- good, but I only got 3 and they were kinda cold....
Yesterday Dinner: Chicken enchiladas! They were delicious. but I guess it wasnt real mexican food because Sahndra said so.
Saturday dinner: at knotts, so i've got not much to say.
Saturday lunch: I had a burger. It was alright


soooo 3.7 stars/5 ... gettin' better gettin' better....

The Almost Arcageon Files

I almost forgot...BRING BACK COSMOLYMPICS!!!...The Wintosmolympics (Winter Cosmolympics) or something like that... 8)

Weekend and Monday recap

So over the weekend we wen to Knott's berry farm, which was cool. It was nice to get out of ERC and go on a trip. the next day we went to the beac, which was alright. I'm not a fan of the beach, but it was fun to hang out. We also had a jello fight which could have been a lot better. On the weekends before we leave to go on the outings there is nothing to do. We hang out for a few hours just walking around and playing with a few balls from the office. We should have computer access and be able to go places on campus without the supervision of R.A.'s. i know that the administration is trying to keep us under control and they get in trouble if something happens to us, but I don't like being pent up on a saturday morning. Constant oraganization of trips is a bit over kill and I think a little spontinaity would go a long way. It's nice that we can walk to and from our cluster instruction without R.A's but I would ike some more of those freedoms becky was talking about today at lunch. In all though, Cosmos is a cool program and there is a lot of opportunity for learning and grow in science and math. I'm so excited to start the knietic sculptures. I really want to win and I have some great ideas and my group seems promising. i guess the biggest problem I have here is that I wish I had my own computer since there is very strict and limited computer use. I can't wait for the weekend!

I finally finished my clock!! I'm ridiculously excited because the program and my design hit its incredibly frustrating points when various glitches delayed the process for days, then I designed my clock to not function and panicked a bit, but now it's finally done and functions and it's a relief.  The lecture made a slight bit more sense than the last which provides me with the deceitful hope that over time, I'll understand the material.  The weekend was pretty amazing including a suite sleepover, amusement park, beach, and disgusting, crazy, and awesome jello fight.  They keep us pretty busy here with the strictly scheduled events, so in case the parents are actually reading this blog, we honestly are busy and will call eventually.  I've really enjoyed meeting all the people here and comparing the differences we have despite the fact that we are from California.  Norcal all the way.

July 14

After a busy weekend, it was a nice change to get back to a calm schedule. The only problem I had was transitioning back to waking up at 6:45 to get to run. Because I missed today's running session, I plan to run for the next four days. In class, I put the aesthetic touches on my clock, which appears to work seamlessly. It was nice to have lunch with Dr. Tu, but no one was willing to ask questions. Working Model was a challenge in adjusting and manipulating the import, but I am near to a ready simulation. I met my teammates for the kinetic sculpture group project, and I think we will work well together, with so many different talents. Have a nice day.
Roger Chin

The Weekend and July 14 (Monday)

I didn't know it was possible to do so much in a weekend. First I had to compete for a washer and a dryer in the laundry room, which was stressful, but good because I got laundry done! I can so do laundry Mom. In the afternoon we went to Knott's which is always fun. Every time I go they seem to have new roller coasters, including the Pony Express and Sierra Sidewinder, which were cool, but short. My favorite part of the day was when some boys tried to tell Shelby and I how scary Supreme Scream was and we told them we have been going on that ride since we were kids. The beach was also really clean and clear, we even saw some fish. We built a Mayan temple sandcastle, but it got destroyed by the waves and some angry little kids. It was kind of lame that we had lots of free time in the morning and no access to computers so we had to stress about the notes we had to type on Sunday night. My notes were about roller coasters and the embedded systems that control them, so it was pretty interesting. Most of the computers in roller coasters are there to keep you safe, which is always good.

Today in class we worked on our clocks and put them into working model. I had to trace over my clock because it had overlapping line issues. When my clock was finally in working model I could see it swing and it was really cool to see how my clock should work. We had more problems when we transferred it to video, which resulted in a grainy film I have yet to fix. I'll have to play around with the video more tomorrow. I made tons of progress on my clock construction, all I have to do tomorrow is tie on the string and film it. Almost everything worked out with my new cutout, but I still had some trouble with the hub, which attaches the escapement wheel to the metal rod. I re-tapped it and tried different screws, and finally I had to go to Chris, the design studio manager, who used intense pliers instead of our dinky screwdrivers to put it in. If everything goes well, I should be finished tomorrow. I've never been so excited about a clock in my life and I really can't wait to see the finished project. We finished the day with a lecture about inertia, which was not too hard to understand, especially since it was mainly a review of our last lecture. I am also excited for our kinetic sculptures. I'm sure Sean, Roger, Shelby and mine will be crazy and functional.

Monday

Today went pretty well. I was disappointed when I wasn't able to run this morning because i was too exhausted. It was really nice to be able to have some freedom and be able to walk to our cluster building as a group. We worked all morning on working model and what could have taken me 5 minutes ended up taking me two to three hours and once i finally got it all done the program quit on me and I had to re-import the entire pendulum. We ate lunch with the administrators and we were a very quiet group. I was so quiet because i was so exhausted and because i really did not have that much to say. I am overall really pleased with my cluster and I did not have to much negative things to say. I thought it was really nice though that we had a lunch together because it showed that the cosmos staff cares about what the students think and how we heard about the program in order to reach out to more students. I also found that the opportunities that the scholarships give are such amazing chances for students to continue in math and science after cosmos. After lunch we went back into the design studio and finished up our pendulums. I still have not completed the pendulum although i made a little bit of progress in painting and putting the whole piece together. I was dreading the lecture because of how tired i was. Once we were in the lecture though i found that the lecture was very interesting and it made a lot of things make sense. I am also very happy with the fact that my cluster does not have that much homework. We already work so many hours a day in our summer and to have homework on top of that just stresses us out and does not let us to enjoy our summers. I still have to complete my group request forms but i really like how we get the opportunity to express why we should work together instead of just having our group broken apart. 

The Arcageon Files

This time around I'm going to complain, rant, and compliment because the blogs are apparently God and things happen when you talk about it. I'm going to start by saying that I need access to the piano and some kind of volleyball or badminton court because both are about the same height and it would be much easier to legitamitely own everyone at Badminton. I just need to be able to play the piano at free time or "activity time." It doesn't even have to be every day, but it has to be more than once a week. I've only been able to play one time so far.
Our cluster has been fine with the work load so I'm not going to complain about that. If it does get bad, you'll know. I really like the group I have for the kinetic sculpture project, so I hope that that doesn't get changed. The food has been better than I thought on some days. The wantons were fantastic and reminded me of a restaurant back home and BRING BACK THE FRENCH TOAST! Please! I'm getting tired of seeing an egg or hashbrown combo. The pancakes weren't that bad either, but the french toast was the best.
Okay, I'm going to go ahead and rant about me now so if you want to stop reading now, you can. I am almost finished with a pendulum clock I thought I would never be able to finish, and that was the high point of my day so far. I have two movies of it swinging in working model, although it took hours to get it to work right. My plastic base kept breaking down the middle when I tried to put in a metal rod, but I finally got one to work, so it's okay. It was really scary when I had to ream my pendulum cut-out because I thought "if I mess up, I'm going to do severe damage to the next thing I see because I worked really hard to make it come out right and I'm not going to do it again" (it was a lot harsher than that, but censorship and all)...Anyway, I love my cluster, the people and the projects...I don't know how to put pictures on at this point because I don't know how to get them onto the computer, but if someone could show me how, I would really appreciate it...plus the good people out there would be able to see my amazing photo skills...not.
The weekend was incredibly full, but it was really fun. I loved Knott's Berry Farm because I love roller coasters, though it is no comparison to Six Flags. It was really fun getting to go on all the rides with my best friend here at Cosmos, Marisa, since we are both "roller coaster people" too. We were the crazy ones that went on the flip-you-upside-down-and-twist-you-all-over-the-place motion simulator that was at Balboa Park that I already talked about. It was fun watching the boys act "macho" when they thought they were all "manly" riding on the "big" rides and then Marisa and I would come along and think, "I've ridden this ride since I was tall enough to go on it..." The beach was also fun, and the water was the clearest water I've been in other than Hawaii. I could open my eyes under water and see things coming really clearly. At my beach back at Manhattan, I can only see about a foot in front of me unless it is a really good day. I also saw a group of four really large silver fish that I almost tripped over.
I think I've taken up enough space now so, until next time... 8)

Yay!

I finished my clock today!!! That is most definitely exciting. I'm still having issues with the computer programs, frustrating issues, but it's all good. I have dinner soon, the study time, which I'm going to use to try to figure out the computer programs more. Well, it isn't so much as figuring it out, as it is redoing everything because I had to make a pretty big change to my pendulum. Tomorrow we have a guest lecturer, who is immensly involved in the controversial topic of stem cell research, which I touched on in a paper that I wrote last December, so I'm excited for that. We made our prelimanary teams today, and I'm glad with mine, which is, as of now, made up of Harman, Albert, Charles, and myself. We all have a lot to bring to the table, and our kinetic sculpture will be great, I'm sure. Well, I'm going to go wake up my friend and eat.

Good morning!! I had a lot of fun this weekend. Knots Berry Farm was a lot of fun, as well as the beach. My favorite part of this past weekend was going to Knots Berry Farm. Yesterday after we came back from the beach I worked on my research paper. Also, the Jello Fight was fun!! On Friday I started building my clock and I am hoping I get it done today. I finished importing my pendulum clock into the program Working Model and got some calculations on how many times it hits the wheel.

Weekend Review + Monday -Paul Deardorff

An incredible Monday after a really great weekend full of outdoor activities and games. My favorite part of the weekend was going to Knott's Berry Farm which is a place that I have never been to before. We started off by going on all the fastest roller coasters and finshed them in about three hours. Then we had dinner with the provided meal voucher. The food was excellent and the service was great. After, we went on our favorite roller coasters for a second time, but we waited in line longer for a front seat on the cart. By this time, it was dark and a lot more exciting. The next day (Sunday) was just as enjoyable becasue I did my laundry, went to the ocean, and participated in a suite poker tournament. The laundry went well although the dryer did not fully dry my clothes although I put them in for 80 minutes. It was probably better, however because my clothes just dried in the closet on hangers. I was surprised by the performance of the MayTAG washers/dryers because they are normally a very reputable company. Maybe after years of abuse, they have become weak.

The ocean was great and the water was semi-warm. I enjoyed just floating in the waves and occasionaly swimming farther out. After the return from the beach, I ventured into my room to finish my homework before some more suite activities and games. I was very excited about starting my homework because I was able to do it on a topic that was really interesting to me. The assignment was to research and write two pages of notes on a topic of engineering that interests you and could possibly be something you would do as a career in the future. I chose robotics in the military. Specifically unmanned robots (UAV's) produced by two of my favorite companies, Northrop Grumman and Foster Miller. Northrop produced the MQ-8 Fire Scout which is an unmanned helicopter capable of autonomous vertical takeoff and landing. Foster Miller produced the first unmanned robots which defuse IED's (Improvised Explosive Devise) in a process called EOD (Explosive Ordanince Displosal) . The robots, called Talon and MAARS are extremely versital and represent the perfect junction of good engineering and user (controller) interface.

After all my homwork was done, the suite poker tournament began. Matt (the RA) wiped out two players in the first round with a very good hand. A long tournament shorter, I was left against Matt and lost to him because he had sets of 2. Maybe we will rematch tonight.

Bye for now,

Best,

Paul Deardorff

Monday, July 14

I can't believe that a whole week has past already! The past weekend was pretty exciting because we went to Knott's Berry Farm and the beach. My favorite parts were definitely the big roller coaster rides and meeting my friend from UC Irvine. It was nice to be able to relax on the beach after a long day of walking in an amusement park. The only downside is that I got sunburned on my shoulders. I hope this doesn't increase my risk of skin cancer when I grow up. Right now, I'm working on trying to model my pendulum on a program called working model, but I'm not sure if it's exactly working properly. The dimensions of my model are really weird and apparently my pendulum is 7 meters long. Hopefully by the end of today, I will get everything figured out.

First Week

This week has been a blast . Making the clocks was a very interesting and exciting experience. The program that makes the blueprint(AutoCAD) and the program that makes a simulation of how the clock will swing(WorkingModel) are quite frustrating programs and it takes some time to get used to them. It is satisfying when you see your clock come to fruition inside a machine that uses a laser to cut through certain materials(LaserCAMM). Now we just have to build the bases.
The week at COSMOS has been a great experience. I have really enjoyed the taste of college life. All the students, teachers, and COSMOS staff are very friendly, helpful, and great people to be around with. I really like how the program has a perfect balance of work and play. There is a lot of work to do while there's also a lot of really wide-ranged varieties of fun and exciting activities.
I am really looking forward to the next three weeks at COSMOS!

Weekend Review

The weekend was more fun than I had expected. On Saturday we went to Knott's Berry Farm. The meal voucher which we were given guaranteed chips and a drink. One of the available drinks was Knott's Berry juice. It tasted great. All the other food was disgusting. The theme park was similar to Great America in the Bay Area. My favorite ride was the Jaguar, which gave a pleasant view of the whole park.

Today, we went to the beach for three hours. I did laundry in the morning while thinking of topic to pick for the individual project. We went to the beach after lunch, had some free time, and then were required to go to the jello fight. I wish that such things were not mandatory because I had the research homework to do. The jello fight was fun while it lasted.

There are only a few dozen laptops to check out during study time, and those who don't get them have little to chance to complete homework. Luckily a friend let me use his laptop to do research, but other people in my suite were not so fortunate.

Until next time,
--Vivek Choksi

The Weekend

To start off with, what a busy weekend!

On Saturday, I went to support William (Custer 5) in a Rubik's Cube competition. I have never been to one before, and as soon as I entered the room, the sound of cubes clicking filled the air with an intense calm. I was able to film William as he solved five cubes, one of which was his personal best (37.79 seconds.) After that, we went to Knott's Berry Farm. Even though I am from Southern California, I had never been to Knott's Berry Farm and it was really fun. I went on a lot of roller coasters. It was a long day, and when we got back at 11:50, I was exhausted.

Today, we went to the beach. The weather was really nice and the water was surprisingly pretty warm. Later, when we got back, I took part in a Jello-Fight. There were four tubs filled with watery red and green "Jell-o" that people threw at other people. It was a lot of fun, even though it was kind of short, and at the end, everyone who participated was covered in green and red Jello.

This weekend was a lot of fun and I can't wait to begin another week!

More later...
Austin