Team UV has officially transitioned to Engineering A Future (EAF).
Please click the following link or the above picture to redirect to our new website: Engineering A Future !
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Well, it appears that it has become time at last for Team UV to end its journey. Today marks the 345th day that TeamUV.org has been active and I can guarantee you that every one of us here at Team UV has throughly enjoyed and cherished the 29,676,840 seconds that this blog has been running (at the time of publishing this post). During this time we have had the incredible opportunity to share some of our own research and, far more importantly, help to inspire interest in the STEM fields amongst the general public with visitors from 115 countries for a total of nearly 8,300 views and well over 200 likes from 114 WordPress followers, our email followers, and many others.
This blog has far exceeded our expectations and for that we have all of our family, friends, supporters, and readers to thank. Without all of you, we would have never been able to accomplish what we have over the past year. I have been honored to lead this team and to have the chance to interact with all of you on a daily basis, all-the-while growing with my teammates and watching them progress through the challenges of the last 15+ months of our senior project. I believe that I can speak for all of us when I say that the experience of writing to all of you here at Team UV is not one that any of us will soon forget. These are the kinds of memories that stick with you.
The experience afforded to all of Team UV by sharing with you all over the past year will serve us well in the future as we push onwards and upwards in life and face new challenges, and I sincerely hope that our time here will serve all of you in the same way. From compressible flow regimes to programming Arduinos to biomedical diagnostic tests to 3D-printing makeup to insects with gear-like rear legs, we truly have covered a whole lot of incredibly diverse topics here at Team UV, but we have not even begun to scratch the surface of what the world of engineering has to offer. Part of the beauty of the world of engineering is that it truly is limitless. Boundaries to the engineering mindset do not exist and physical barriers to what engineers can do simply serve as challenges for scientists and engineers alike to accept. We hope that we have begun to shed some light on this reality and on the opportunities available within the STEM fields.
We set out hoping to reach just one person out there and help to inspire them to go on to pursue STEM-related careers or simply just to spend some time everyday thinking scientifically. I personally have heard from numerous people over the past year about how we have made a difference within their lives or the lives of their friends or families. I have also heard similar stories from my teammates, and that is the golden metric.
I am beyond proud of my team and what we have been able to accomplish and look forwards to continue to share with our readers about STEM over at our next project: EAF. For those that do not know, Engineering A Future (EAF) is a website that I originally intended to launch back in December 2012 with the goal of inspiring interest in the STEM fields amongst the general public…sound familiar? After preparing and stockpiling posts for a few short weeks, my Winter Break ended and the Winter 2012 quarter started in at Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) and my plans fell apart. I had become far too busy, did not have any help, and simply put had never done anything like EAF (or TeamUV.org) before. EAF was created with good intentions, but was not planned for properly by me, but I can assure you, that has all changed.
Flash forward three years and EngineeringAFuture.com will be relaunching on Monday (July 13th, 2015). This time the website is ready to go, as is the team. I have spent the past few months preparing EAF for its launch and am excited to cut the ribbon Monday morning. EAF will follow the same idea that TeamUV.org has, but will take it to a whole new level. EAF has been optimized with one goal in mind: to get as many people as humanly possible excited about STEM. Crazy, right? Well I believe that I have the perfect team to do it and that we are more than prepared to hit the ground running, help people to learn, learn (ourselves), and just have fun with it. Most of Team UV will be carrying over to EAF: Abraham, Ketton, and Andrew will all be bringing their massive brains, awesome outlooks, and passion for STEM-blogging and connecting with the community over to EAF. Unfortunately, Ben will not be continuing with us at EAF and so we wave a somber goodbye to a valued team member and friend. But fear not, while we may be losing a teammate, we are also introducing some awesome new features.
First is the style of posting. EAF will be posting three times a week (just like Team UV has been), but this time we will be posting on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Posts will go live at 0800 (purely so that our followers who check the site early will already have the content up to read, rather than having to wait around for two hours) and the social media (Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram) sharing of the posts will be sent out at 1000 hours (two hours later). Post categories have been almost completely revamped and the new categories will consist of:
- Blog Posts (Monday – Brian, Wednesday – other EAF members & guests)
- Techno Babble: Much like our Well Read posts; talking about interesting science/engineering being done today
- Lecture Notes: Much like our Presentation posts; mini lectures on cool science and engineering
- Open Mind: This category will be carried over; insight into the engineering mindset
- Guest Posts: This is a cool new category where people from outside EAF can submit requests to write guest posts on EAF! Read more here.
- Picture Posts (Friday): Very short descriptions (1-3 sentences on average) accompanied by cool STEM-related pictures
- EAF News: Short announcement posts whenever there is a change to EAF
On top of this, the new website is far more aesthetically pleasing, has many cool features and pages, and will hopefully mean a much more awesome experience for our readers and followers. Lastly, we have some very cool ideas in the works for some awesome new types of content that will launch later on down the road. The website is currently having its finishing touches put on with the About EAF page being finished up offline before transferring it to the site this weekend, a few member bio pages being finished up, and the graphical interface being tweaked a little bit more for Monday’s launch.
In closing, we want to thank our readers/supporters/followers for joining us along this journey and sincerely hope that all of you will continue to follow us over at EAF starting Monday! On Monday, a post redirecting our readers to EAF will be published.
Thank you for your time
Sincerely,
Brian
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Photo Credit: thumbs.dreamstime.com
Well looks like the time has come to say farewell. This has definitely been a fun ride here at TeamUV.org and I can definitely say I will not forget it. I honestly want to thank everyone who has supported us this entire trip whether it be reading our post, donating, commenting, or any kind of support you have given us. I just hope that we were able to shed some light on all of the interesting items that people just like us have created in the STEM field. We all have learned a lot from the beginning of this project (SHIELA-D) up til the end (DORY) and that experience is something that we will never forget.
You know, anyone can put up an article. But when you put up an article and see that people are coming to the site, reading it, and leaving comments, it is such a great feeling and once again I want to thank everyone who supported us no matter how small or large. As for the “For Now” part, I will be putting up articles for Engineering A Future for a little while so feel free to come, kick back, and read some more articles!
From the coolest guy in the group…..You Rock!
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NCUR team photo in Spokane, WA (left to right: Andrew, Ben, Brian, Abraham, + Ketton).
Abe here. Just wanted to thank everyone who donated to our project, read our articles, or simply supported us along the way. We accomplished a lot with this project, visited a lot of places, and even represented our department at the Engineering Project Showcase. More importantly, I am more than pleased with what we learned by tackling this project. I think everyone on the team got a glimpse of what being on a real engineering team was all about and we can now take this experience to industry or wherever we go. I hope that what we have done here inspires you to do something you’re passionate about and give it your all. In closing, I will continue to write for Engineering a Future for the next few months so follow us there!
Goodbye nerd friends. I’ll see you later this month on EAF!
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Team UV Crest, representing our principal application (ISR), and our potential future applications (Mine Detection, Underwater Inspection, and Exploration).
It has been quite an adventure writing the posts for this site, I know I have learned a lot, and hopefully you have too. While this blog catered mostly to people interested in the science technology engineering and math fields I did what I could to make it accessible to all. One of the best ways to learn something new is to try and explain it, so thank you for letting me learn by explaining to you.
Hopefully most of you will continue on the Engineering A Future. I will not, my blog writing journey has reached its end here. It was fun while it lasted stay curious and stay creative, always stretch your minds to the limits!
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Team UV Crest, representing our principal application (ISR), and our potential future applications (Mine Detection, Underwater Inspection, and Exploration).
So the day has finally come; my last Team UV blog post. It’s been a true pleasure writing about STEM topics for all of you to enjoy. Blogging for this site has given me a venue to express my engineering interests, as well as way to see what my fellow Team UV members are in to. As Mechanical Engineering graduates who completed the same basic curriculum at Cal Poly Pomona, it’s fascinating that we are all interested in different fields. I can’t wait to see where the five of us will go in our careers.
I’m excited for the next chapter with Engineering A Future (launches Monday July 13th) and the chance to share my interests more deeply with you all. As of now, I will be posting once a month on EAF about my favorite topics: robotics, the energy industry, and electronics!
See you all on EAF!
– Andrew
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Happy independence day. Photo Credit: wretchedmaniam.wordpress.com
Happy Independence Day from all of us here at Team UV!
As you celebrate the 239th anniversary of our the day the United States of America officially declared its independence with your friends and family today, please don’t forget the men and women who fight to protect this great country on a daily basis and remember that neither Independence Day nor the United States of America would exist had it not been for the sacrifice of the 200,000 patriots who fought for our independence and freedoms during the American Revolutionary War, more than 25,000 of whom paid the ultimate sacrifice.
So please enjoy this time with your friends and family, barbecuing, watching fireworks, just hanging out, or whatever other special plans you may have in store for today, but please also spend some time today thinking about the debt of gratitude that we owe to the brave men and women of our armed forces who have continuously fought for freedoms over the last 240 years.
Thank you for your service to all our troops, past, present, and future.
Happy Independence Day!
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Bandel Manufacturing. Photo Credit: bandel.com
A big thank you to Mr. Russ Neff and the rest of the team over at Bandel Manufacturing for donating the materials and lending the tools necessary for us to shape the body of our underwater vehicle! A few pictures of the process of building the body to our design are included below:
Body half mold shaping process from start to finish.
Body at the end of fiberglassing (top) and testing the fiberglass for leaks in an extremely dirty pool that has since been thoroughly cleaned (bottom).
Once again, we thank Bandel Manufacturing as we could not have created the body of our vehicle without you. For more on Bandel Manufacturing, please click this link to their website or visit our Sponsors & Donations page to find the link there.
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Team UV Conferences and Competitions between November 2014 and today.
Team UV was selected to represent the Mechanical Engineering department here at Cal Poly Pomona during Friday’s Engineering Project Showcase, where we presented a very brief (12 min. presentation) introductory look at some of our research to the other presenters, faculty from all of the engineering departments, and some industry representatives. We took 3rd place overall and walked away with a certificate and significant cash prize, bringing this chapter of Team UV to rest.
This was our last planned presentation, although we are considering some journal submissions, possible conferences, competitions, and the like further down the road; however, for the time being, we will be closing the book on Team UV. Over the next 2 months, we will be saying our goodbyes on TeamUV.org through some send-off posting. Not to worry, however, because the same style of posting will be carried over onto my website (EngineeringAFuture.com) with many of the same authors upon closure of TeamUV.org. I created EngineeringAFuture.com back in December 2012, but never got it off the ground…flash forward to 2 years later and TeamUV.org launched in July 2014 with the same goal of inspiring interest in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields, but with the added goal of sharing some of the progress of our project. Engineering A Future is an active domain, so you can check it out now if you would like, but everything you see on there currently will be changing as the website is retrofitted over the next 2 months in preparation for its relaunch.
In closing, while I believe that I speak for all of Team UV when I say that we will greatly miss writing for our readers here at TeamUV.org, this should not be looked at as the end, but rather simply a new chapter in our book as we transition to EAF (Engineering A Future). In the next few weeks, posts will occur as follows:
Full Week of Posts with Regular Scheduling (Well Read Tu 1000, Presentation Th 1000, Open Mind Su 1300)
Brian: June 2, 4, 7
Andrew: June 9, 11, 14
Ben: June 16, 18, 21
Abraham: June 23, 25, 28
Ketton: June 30; July 2, 5
Goodbye Posts (M, Tu, W, Th, F 1000)
Andrew: July 6
Ben: July 7
Abraham: July 8
Ketton: July 9
Brian: July 10
This means that July 10, 2015 1000 hours will mark the last post for TeamUV.org. Posting on EngineeringAFuture.com will begin the following week; I will announce the post scheduling for EAF on July 10 as a few things are still yet to be set, but it will be either 2 or 3 posts a week.
Thank you to all of our readers for all of your time and support and I look forward to continuing to write for you all over at EAF, but for now, please continue reading here at Team UV as our regular scheduling continues with my full week of posts starting on Tuesday.
Thank you for your time
Sincerely,
Brian
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Soldiers from the 3rd US Infantry Regiment (‘The Old Guard’) place flags before hundreds of thousands of graves at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia every year on Memorial Day; there are more than 400,000 graves at Arlington. Photo Credit: Mark Wilson (Getty Images)
Please set aside some time in your day today to remember the men and women who have given their lives so that we can continue to live free. As many have said, the greatest tragedy in war is to be forgotten, so please take this day to remember those who have fallen and paid the ultimate price for our freedom. Please show the families of the fallen that the sacrifice of their loved ones was not for nothing, that we will not simply forget their names or their actions.
A mother and son sit by the grave of their husband and father. Photo Credit: Pete Marovich / EPA
Memorial Day in Boston; 20,000 flags. Photo Credit: floridapolitics.com
Please remember the sacrifices of all of the service members who gave their lives over the history of this great country.
Memorial Day 2013 infographic. Photo Credit: US Department of Veterans Affairs
Remember all of those who have given their lives in service to this country, whether human or not.
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Military Working Dog (MWD) Rico and his handler pay tribute at the War Dog Cemetery at US Naval Base, Guam. Photo Credit: Petty Officer 2nd Class John F. Looney (US Navy)
MWD Lex protects the grave of his handler, Cpl. Dustin Jerome Lee (USMC); Lex and Lee were stationed in Iraq when a mortar attack killed Lee and left Lex with shrapnel in his spine. Photo Credit: kathleenallisondogslife.blogspot.com
Lex protects Lee regardless of the weather. Photo Credit: http://www.fundngive.com/tribute-marine-cpl-dustin-j-lee-and-mwd-lex/
And please remember that while we celebrate our freedom and remember the fallen today, men and women are stationed overseas, standing ready to protect our freedom and that of others, so please remember everyone deployed.
A member of U.S. Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit weeps during a memorial service. Photo Credit: Erik de Castro (Reuters)
Show our fallen service members that their lives matter, please remember our protectors and their sacrifices. Pay tribute to the countless heroes who have kept this great country free and the many who will follow in their footsteps.
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Team UV arrived home from the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) late last night after having traveled from California to Nevada to Idaho to Oregon to Washington, back to Oregon and finally home to Southern California yesterday, amassing over 3,000 miles between travel, the conference, food, hotels, and a bit of tourism.
Team UV’s trip to and from NCUR.
Map created with: mapcustomizer.com
The conference itself was a lot of fun and proved to be a great opportunity to share our project with students, scholars, and many others from all over the country, while also giving us the chance to check out some of the research that others have been conducting as well. Perhaps one of the coolest moments, was meeting an Eastern Washington University (site of the conference) engineering student who was familiar with our website and who told us he wished he could work on projects like ours in the future, which is a huge win in our books, as it reflects the fact that we have been at least a little bit successful in one of our primary goals here at TeamUV.org: to inspire interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), especially amongst the general public. This was definitely one of the cooler moments for our team regarding the past week, as well as the duration of the project in general.
It is unfortunate that we had to run before getting the name of the person we talked to briefly regarding our website after the presentation, but to you we would like to say the following: thank you for your readership and support and please believe that none of us could have possibly imagined a scenario in which we would accomplish/learn/grow as much as we have over the past 12 months of this project when this team was first established last April. If you want to be able to do projects like this, then go for it! Don’t let anyone stand in your way, and as long as you are willing to pour yourself into it, to push yourself to your limits, to get up and fight for what you believe in, and to maintain that level of inspiration, dedication, and determination, there is not a force in this universe that can stop you from achieving your goals. Sure, there’s adversity; maybe it’s financial, maybe it’s administrative, maybe it’s the fact that there just aren’t enough hours in the day, but all of this can be overcome. We raised nearly 85% of our project costs through online crowdsourcing, filed paperwork on a daily basis for nearly three weeks to get to the national conference, put in nearly 5,000 man hours between the five of us over the first 11 months of the project (by a conservative estimate), and slept far less than we’d like to admit, but most importantly, we got to where we are today. Four conferences, representing the Mechanical Engineering department at the Engineering Showcase, a successful website, an excellent team with a great future, and an outstanding project, and we’re still kicking. Remember that seemingly-corny saying “you can do anything that you put your mind to”? Well, it’s time to start believing, because mind over matter is for real and to paraphrase Theodore Roosevelt, nothing worth doing ever comes easily.
Michael P. Murphy/Operation Redwings memorial in Michael P. Murphy Park (formerly Lake Ronkonkoma Park) in New York. Photo Credit: blunttrama.ning.com
All that’s left is to find your inspiration. For me personally, my inspiration comes from our troops. The way I see it, if someone can put their life on the line halfway around the world to protect the freedoms that I enjoy, if they can risk being shot at, blown up, captured or killed in a foreign place thousands of miles from home, possibly alone, starving, and near death (as was the case for Marcus Luttrell during Operation Red Wings), so that people they have never even met before can go on living comfortable lives, how can I possibly complain that my work is too hard, or that I am too tired or too hungry? For me, these are the considerations that make my issues pale in comparison and that push me to keep on pushing myself until there’s nothing left, and then to push further. To all of our readers, identify something worth fighting for and then go to war with your own demons over it, because you can do whatever it is that you want to do and remember, pain is temporary, pride is forever.
Until next time,
Team UV
P.S. Regular post scheduling will resume Thursday.
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Team UV’s trip so far. Map created with: mapcustomizer.com
Today Team UV will be skipping our usual Presentation post as we are out of state in Washington for the 2015 National Conference on Undergraduate Research, where we will be presenting some of our research that we have conducted thus far in the work on our project. We have traveled some 1,500 miles from California to Nevada to Idaho to Oregon to finally Washington while transporting our propulsion system demonstrator SHEILA-D (Submerged Hydrodynamically propelled Explorer, Implementation: Los Angeles – Demonstrator) and our vehicle DORY (Dynamic Observational Reconnaissance through biomimicrY), and are excited to be presenting our research later today.
NCUR 2015 banner. Photo Credit: EWU.edu
More info to come later in the week. Until next time!
Team UV
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Dory and Sheila-D in the top row and post-presentation team congratulatory pizza and beer at the Cal Poly Pomona brewery (Innovation Brew Works) in the bottom photo.
Photo Credit: Andrew Blancarte
First off, we want to apologize for missing our Thursday post, it has been a very hectic week for Team UV with almost all of the members going without sleep for 30 hours and above at some point or another; for example, I personally received about 8 hours of sleep total between Sunday morning and Thursday evening and at one point had to go about 30 hours without eating in order to get everything accomplished, but alas!, it was for a good cause and now Team UV can finally relax! (well, relax relative to other people, haha)
This past week and a half Team UV has had a week straight of building, testing, and programming for our vehicle, final exams, grad school visits, reports and projects due, graduation stuff, and of course completing our senior project! On Thursday, we delivered our final project presentation to the Mechanical Engineering board responsible for assigning our grades (we all received A’s), turned in our 140 page project report, and did a live demonstration of our vehicle Dory (Dynamic Observational Reconnaissance through biomimcrY). Dory (our Phase III vehicle) can be seen in the picture above, next to our Phase I propulsion system demonstrator Sheila-D (Submerged Hydrodynamically propelled Explorer, Implementation: Los Angeles – Deomonstrator)! (Read more about Sheila on our About page)
So this marks the “official” end of our senior project; however, this does not mark the end of the project altogether. We still have a lot of work to do regarding improving the build, adding more features, completing more advanced testing, and overall producing a more polished solution. Additionally, we will be attending the National Conference on Undergraduate Research (NCUR) at Eastern Washington University from April 16th-18th, the California State University system-wide Student Research Conference (CSU SRC) from May 1st-2nd (we are attending this because we won our session and award money at the Cal Poly Pomona Student Research Conference on March 6th), the Cal Poly Pomona (CPP) Senior Project Symposium at the end of May, and hopefully the CPP Symposium Showcase at that same time (this highlights the top project team from each engineering department).
Additionally, we will be looking to submit to some journals, quite possibly looking into at least one patent. Lastly, this website will continue publishing posts until the project ends, at which point these types of posts will continue on EngineeringAFuture.com. Anyways, thank you all for your continued support and I would like to remind everyone that we still have our fundraising campaign (GoFundMe.com/TeamUV), which will continue as long as the project is running as we still have quite a few costs ahead of us!
Please check back in tomorrow for a Well Read post from Ben!
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Team UV reached the first dry powered milestone (rotating propulsor) tonight! Albeit backwards…haha
Check out the video above and we’ll be sure to post more videos as we make more progress in our testing!
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2015 National Conference on Undergraduate Research. Photo Credit: CUR.org
A few days ago, Team UV was selected to present some of our research regarding our underwater vehicle and its propulsion system at the 2015 National Conference on Undergraduate Research, which will take place at the Eastern Washington University from April 16th-18th! Thank you to our readers for your support and for following our blog; we will not know what day, timeslot, or room we will be presenting on/during/in until early March.
Also, we want to thank those of you who have contributed to our fundraising campaign and mention that we have now raised $1,630 thanks to your generous donations! Thank you for your support and please continue to help spread the word as we continue in the purchasing and manufacturing stages!
We also want to note that no donation is too small and not a single penny donated will go to waste, it will all be used to increase the quality of our vehicle, to add capabilities (through additions to the sensor suite or additional drag-reducing technologies, etc.), and to enable us to conduct better testing (i.e. the construction of a flow tank for actual flow visualization). As an example of this, we are excited to inform you that through some of your donations we have been able to get our hands on a superhydrophobic substance (from Hydrobead) that will help us to decrease drag on the exterior of our vehicle significantly through the repulsion of the surrounding water. As follows from the above statements, any money that we raise above the $5,000 will be put directly into the project in one of many ways, including (but not limited to) those listed above.
Dyed water drops on wood coated with a super-hydrophobic substance. Photo Credit: TheFutureofThings.com
In addition to this, at this point, it is unclear as to where the funding to attend our research conference will come from (whether out of pocket or at least partially funded through our school’s research office), so all donations will help us significantly!
Lastly, I want to remind our readers that we will be trying to post funding progress updates as often as possible and that you can find a full-sized PDF of our pull-tag poster on our Sponsors & Donations page if you would like to print one out and post it to help get the word out. If you would like to help out in other ways, it would mean a lot to us if you would tell your friends/family/coworkers/etc. about our fundraising campaign (and possibly ask them to share it as well), share it on Facebook, or perhaps even just spread the word about TeamUV.org in general, as our biggest goal with regards to this website is to inspire interest in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
Any help is greatly appreciated and please come back Sunday for Andrew’s Open Mind post!
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Team UV Badge, representing our principal application (ISR), and our potential future applications (Mine Detection, Underwater Inspection, and Exploration).
Team UV would like to update our readers and supporters with regards to the progress you all have helped us to make through our fundraising campaign. As of today (January 7th, 1525 hours), we have raised $1,620 of our goal thanks to your donations!
As a way of saying thank you and hoping to share a little more about our project with you, we will be publishing some images of our project over the next few weeks. The reason we have refrained from posting any pictures from our project in the past was due to the proprietary nature of many of the systems on our vehicle (and the vehicle as a whole), but we are realizing more and more how important it is that we share a little more of what we are doing with our supporters. So without further ado, below we have posted 2 pictures of SHEILA-D (Submerged Hydrodynamically-propelled Explorer, Implementation: Los Angeles – Demonstrator).
Left: SHEILA-D producing thrust. Right: SolidWorks 3D model of SHEILA-D.
SHEILA-D was our propulsion system demonstrator that we designed, built, and tested over a span of 36 days and 850 (by conservative estimates) man hours during Phase I of our project (which took place during our Machine Design lecture/lab combo in Spring 2014). The goal for SHEILA, was to demonstrate the ability to provide thrust with our innovative underwater propulsion system, and in this respect we succeeded. However, we were aware of many shortcomings from this initial design (i.e. poor material choice as influenced by cost/time limitations, poor tolerances, etc.) and thus revamped our efforts with regards to the propulsion system during Phase II [the senior project portion/development of the entire vehicle from late Spring 2014-mid Spring 2015 (project symposium)]. For more information on the history and plans for this project, please check out our About page.
We are currently in the purchasing portion of Phase II (to be followed by manufacturing/assembly, programming, testing, final analyses, and report/presentation preparation) and thus could use funding now more than ever. We would like to thank all of you for supporting our efforts and ask that you please continue to share our website and our fundraising campaign (GoFundMe.com/TeamUV) with as many people as possible. No donation is too small and for those who know the team personally, offline donations are welcomed as well.
This post will be reposted on our fundraising page, and 1 week from now we will post some pictures of the original Phase II full-vehicle concept, with the actual Phase II vehicle computer model pictures coming 1-2 weeks after that, so please be sure to check back often and remember, tomorrow Ben will be posting a Presentation post at 1000 hours!
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Team UV at 2014 SCCUR. Photo Credit: Mr. Daniel Saletta (photos); fullerton.edu (SCCUR logo).
Last weekend Team UV presented some of our fluids research for our underwater vehicle at the 22nd annual Southern California Conferences for Undergraduate Research (SCCUR) at the California State University, Fullerton. We enjoyed the opportunity to both get a look at some of the research students at other universities are conducting and to share some of what we have done, as well as to share the website, with students and faculty from other universities. We will also be looking into the possibility of bringing our research to more conferences in the future.
We would also like to update our readers with regards to the progress we have made in our fundraising campaign. Thus far, with your support, we have been able to raise $570! Thank you all for your donations and support, they will absolutely prove incredibly useful in the coming months as we begin to manufacture parts, have some of our more intricate components made, buy materials, equipment, and other components, and begin to design experiments and the necessary testing rigs. We would just like to remind our supporters to please continue to help spread the word about our project, share our fundraising campaign (GoFundMe.com/TeamUV), and if you feel so compelled, to donate to our senior project team to help us to reach our goals and produce our stealthy unmanned underwater ISR (Information, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) vehicle, which we hope can one day help to save lives by taking more of our troops out of the field.
Please remember to check back tomorrow for Abraham’s Presentation post!
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2014 Southern California Conferences for Undergraduate Research.
Photo Credit: Fullerton.edu
A while back, Team UV was selected to present some of our research regarding our underwater vehicle and, more specifically, its propulsion system at the 2014 Southern California Conferences for Undergraduate Research, which will take place at the California State University, Fullerton. So this Saturday (November 22nd), for anyone who might be in attendance, we will we will be presenting during the Oral Session III (from 1445-1545 hours) in room SGMH-2211!
Also, we want to thank those of you who have contributed to our fundraising campaign and mention that we have already raised 11% of our goal of $5,000 thanks to your generous donations! Thank you for your support and please continue to help spread the word!
We also want to note that no donation is too small and not a single penny donated will go to waste, it will all be used to increase the quality of our vehicle, to add capabilities (through additions to the sensor suite or additional drag-reducing technologies, etc.), and to enable us to conduct better testing (i.e. the construction of a flow tank for actual flow visualization). As follows from the above statement, any money that we raise above the $5,000 will be put directly into the project in one of many way, including (but not limited to) those listed above.
Lastly, I want to remind our readers that we will be posting campaign progress updates on average once a week (Wednesdays 1000 hours) and that you can find a full-sized PDF of our pull-tag poster on our Sponsors & Donations page if you would like to print one out and post it to help get the word out. If you would like to help out in other ways, it would mean a lot to us if you would tell your friends/family/coworkers/etc. about our fundraising campaign (and possibly ask them to share it as well), share it on Facebook, or perhaps even just spread the word about TeamUV.org in general, as our biggest goal with regards to this website is to inspire interest in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
Any help is greatly appreciated and please come back tomorrow for Ketton’s Presentation post!
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Team UV fundraising campaign.
Photo Credit: GoFundMe.com
A couple of days ago, Team UV launched its fundraising campaign on GoFundMe.com under the name “Experimental Marine Vehicle Project” in an effort to raise the money necessary for us to manufacture and test our college senior project – a highly maneuverable, higher speed, stealthy, unmanned underwater vehicle with Information, Surveillance, and Reconniassance (ISR) capabilities. Our project is meant to create a vehicle that can conduct naval ISR and, in doing so, take the special operators or otherwise troops who would usually conduct this ISR out of the field and thus harm’s way. More information about our senior project can be found on the About page of this website, and the fundraising campaign can be found at GoFundMe.com/TeamUV; this link is also listed in the right margin of the Home page and in the Sponsors & Donations page of this website.
We are seeking $5,000 in order to cover the manufacturing costs of our vehicle, which will feature many cutting-edge technologies and represents a stark departure from the slow, bulky, impractical, non-stealth-like designs currently in use. We also want to note that no donation is too small and not a single penny donated will go to waste, it will all be used to increase the quality of our vehicle, to add capabilities (through additions to the sensor suite or additional drag-reducing technologies, etc.), and to enable us to conduct better testing (i.e. the construction of a flow tank for actual flow visualization). As follows from the above statement, any money that we raise above the $5,000 will be put directly into the project in one of many way, including (but not limited to) those listed above.
Lastly, I will note that we will be posting campaign progress updates on average once a week (Wednesdays 1000 hours) and that you can find a full-sized PDF of our pull-tag poster on our Sponsors & Donations page if you would like to print one out and post it to help get the word out. If you would like to help out in other ways, it would mean a lot to us if you would tell your friends/family/coworkers/etc. about our fundraising campaign (and possibly ask them to share it as well), share it on Facebook, or perhaps even just spread the word about TeamUV.org in general, as our biggest goal with regards to this website is to inspire interest in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
Any help is greatly appreciated and please come back tomorrow for Andrew’s Presentation post!
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Photo Credit: freehdimageswallpapers.com
Today is Veterans Day and represents a day when we should all take some time out of our day to some how say thank you to the brave men and women who have put their lives on the line (and, unfortunately, sometimes paid the ultimate sacrifice) in order to protect this great nation, its people, and the freedoms guaranteed us by the Constitution.
Korean war veteran Howard Osterkamp once said “We have a motto that sums it all up — ‘All gave some; some gave all.’”. I can think of no better way to encapsulate the courage and sacrifice of the men and women who have fearlessly fought to defend our country; and so in honor of our Armed Services, I would like to reflect on their mottos for those of you who are unfamiliar with them:
United States Marine Corps: Semper Fidelis (Always Faithful)
United States Army: This We’ll Defend
United States Navy: Non Sibi Sed Patriae (Not for Self, but for Country) (I’d also like to add Fair Winds and Following Seas as a thank you)
United States Coast Guard: Semper Paratus (Always Ready)
United States Air Force: Aim High…Fly-Fight-Win
Lastly, I would like to note a few upsetting statistics:
1. At any given time, there are roughly 300,000 homeless veterans; over 1.4 million veterans are at risk of becoming homeless; homeless veterans spend an average of 6 years on the streets; approximately 33% of homeless males in the US are veterans.
2. An estimated 460,000 veterans suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); at least 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have PTSD, 19% of veterans have Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), and 7% of veterans have both PTSD & TBI.
3. Nearly 5,000 veterans commit suicide every year, that’s nearly one every two hours.
The Department of Veterans Affairs only has the means to help a fraction of veterans. It is time that we begin to serve those who have served us. If you would like to get involved with or make a donation to a program that supports veterans, you can either contact the US Department of Veteran Affairs or one of the organizations listed here. I personally make a monthly donation to the Wounded Warrior Project as a way of giving back to those who have given so much for people like you and me…without even knowing or having ever met us, they are willing to put their lives on the line for us.
So please, remember what today is about, and find a way to say thank you to our veterans.
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Today you get to have a voice in the direction that our nation goes. While these may be midterm elections they are still hugely important to the direction of the world. No matter what your perspective is please take a few minutes out of your day and be heard. Less than half the people in this nation vote, and the majority of them are over 30. Only about a quarter of young people vote. This means that the government is becoming less representative of the average person. You can change it. Much of the research talked about on this site comes from federal funding, be it through the Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, or various other federal projects. Other large portions of the research come from private or corporate investment. Whether you promote technology through market control and small government, or large government federal subsidies have your voice heard.
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Photo Credit: PaperBlog.com
Please join Team UV today in remembering the over 3000 people who lost their lives 13 years ago on this day as well as the countless brave men and women who have unselfishly dedicated, and in some cases given, their lives to preventing it from ever happening again. Together we stand, united as one, never to forget.
O say can you see by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation.
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
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Team UV has a new sponsor: CitiPrint !
Access CitiPrint’s website and contact information on our freshly updated “Sponsors & Donations” page now!
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New Team UV member photos have been posted on the Member Bios page! Go there now to view the pictures and read up on the individual members of Team UV!
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View from inside SHEILA-D (Read more in “About” page)
Welcome to the official website of Team UV!
Team UV is a senior project team made up of five Mechanical Engineering undergraduate student from Cal Poly Pomona, namely: Brian, Andrew, Ketton, Abraham, Ben. The team is incredibly passionate about all things engineering and industries covering a diverse spectrum ranging from biomedical to entertainment to defense (and many others).
Team UV’s objective is to develop an underwater vehicle (UV) which operates off of an innovative propulsion system (developed by the team in a previous class) and touts stealth, higher speeds (relative to other UVs), smooth maneuvering, and little to no human interaction. The deadline (as shown by the countdown calendar in the margin) is May 29th, 2015, giving us about 10 months from today to achieve our goal. The aim of this website is to share our passion with others, hopefully get other people interested in STEM, and to hopefully raise some money in order to help Team UV to reach their goals and achieve their dreams! For more information on the team and its goals, read the Member Bios and About pages!
We will be posting to this website at the least three times a week:
- A post in the style of what we refer to as Well Read every Tuesday at 1000 hours by one of the team members.
- A post summarizing one of the team members’ Presentations every Thursday at 1000 hours by one of the team members.
- A post of one of the team members’ Open Mind every Sunday at 1300 hours by one of the team members.
Additional posts may be made throughout the week.
Please explore our website and follow Team UV by email, WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram (All of which can be found in the margin)!
Enjoy!
