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 !
Be sure to subscribe to our new website & follow it please!
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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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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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Yours Truly Shooting a MP5!
Trying to hit a moving, accelerating, and evasive target at long range? No problem, America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has you covered. That’s right…a project named Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) now allows the military to hit targets that move and evade with high accuracy. The video below shows an experienced marksman using the remarkable technology along with a novice shooter completing the same task.
The EXACTO program is understandably secretive about the technology but we know that they have stuffed a “real-time optical guidance system” into a .50 caliber size round. The system accounts for the rough terrain, environments (weather, wind, etc), and other factors soldiers are exposed to that can hinder successful hits. Future work can now be done on other caliber rounds and other applications.
More information here!
Until next time…
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Yours truly pictured on the right! Photo Credit: ThePolyPost.com
With only a couple of oral presentations and other tasks left to do, our project is nearing its end (don’t worry, posts will continue on another website but more on that at a later date!!!). My time as a technical writer so far has been educational, inspiring, and fulfilling. Not many people know this, but before I considered a career in mechanical engineering, I was laying the foundation to be a journalist. I was heavily involved in my middle school and high school newspaper programs and even earned an award for my work. You can even find me in at least three Cal Poly Pomona Poly Post issues!
Albert Einstein quote. Photo Credit: fossdoc.files.wordpress.com
When Team UV decided to create a website where we could inspire interest in the areas of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) I couldn’t help but feel that same passion. Writing for a STEM related blog takes planning and plenty of consideration for various demographics that may visit our site. We have to balance the use of heavy scientific and technical jargon with the ease of describing complex scientific and technical topics. Shifting to one side or the other could easily “cut out” a group of readers if we are not careful. Take the presentations on flow characteristics or materials for example, our team could easily approach the topics in a text book fashion but those without the prerequisite knowledge of physics and engineering will become lost. If we approach it too simply, we dilute the experience of understanding exciting scientific phenomena and may even belittle the many years of work gone into such topics.
NCUR banner. Photo Credit: cur.org
The greatest moment of my technical blogging experience is when we met a TeamUV.org visitor at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research this past April in Washington. I still remember the look on his face when we brought up our website during the presentation and the excitement in his voice when he approached us afterwards. Meeting just that one person made the whole experience of driving over 3,000 miles and through blinding dust storms worth it.
I will continue to find opportunities to blog long after this project is over and I was surprised to find many exciting career paths in technical writing. It only makes sense that scientific websites and magazines have engineers on staff to write about various technical fields. Who else would make a better candidate to write a machine’s user manual?
Please continue to share our website and look out for a post about its future soon!
Until next time…
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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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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 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!
