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Team UV’s Last Post!

Posted by Brian (Team UV) on July 10, 2015
Posted in: Blog. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

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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.

EAF

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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Goodbye, Farewell, So Long…..For Now!

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on July 9, 2015
Posted in: Blog. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

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!

Farewell!

Posted by Abraham (Team UV) on July 8, 2015
Posted in: Blog. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .
NCUR Group Photo + Ketton

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!

This, as All Good Things, Must Pass

Posted by Ben (Team UV) on July 7, 2015
Posted in: Blog. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .
Team UV Badge, representing our principal application (ISR), and our potential future applications (Mine Detection, Underwater Inspection, and Exploration).

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!

Hoverboard Is Finally Here?!

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on July 5, 2015
Posted in: Open Mind. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment
Slide Hoverboard3

Hoverboard. Photo Credit: wonderfulengineering.com

As many of you are aware, we are in the transitioning phase of this website as we close out TeamUV.org and transition to EngineeringAFuture.com over the next two months, so this will be Ketton’s last Open Mind post here at Team UV, but not to fear, there is still one week of posts left here and the same types of articles will be carried over onto EAF (Engineering A Future), so without further ado, please enjoy the following:

We have been yearning for the hoverboard technology ever since it premiered in series like Back to the Future and Real Adventures of Johnny Quest.  But, due to the complexity of the underlying technology, no hoverboards have yet been able to accommodate a real person during flight.  It has largely been agreed that the future hoverboard’s levitation effect will come from the application of electromagnetic levitation rather than any propulsion.  But in addition to the electromagnetism, the new board also uses liquid Nitrogen in some capacity.  The new attempt at the hoverboard is called Slide and it can lift itself off the ground and carry a person.  Not enough technical details regarding the board of our dreams are available, and the sole source of information is a video released by the Tokyo branch of Lexus, the company behind this invention.  The project is a part of the Amazing in Motion campaign by the Lexus company that has produced an 11 foot tall android, a swarm of quadcopters and mannequins performing in Kuala Lumpur.

We see in the video (below) how a young man is getting off from his boring regular board and then moves towards the Slider board.  It really seems to be levitating in thin air.  It seems to be a remarkable feat of engineering and a long-awaited ride for us.  Due to the brand image of Lexus, it is unlikely that it is an edited video.  The video is real but to see an actual hoverboard is mesmerizing.  I bet there are many technical difficulties to overcome before we can actually see it.  There had been an attempt of making a working hoverboard before as Kickstarter attracted the Hendo hoverboard that could levitate and move across a floor of some conductive material to create a secondary field.

The Lexus spokesperson told the media that there won’t be any disclosure of information before the end of the month when the board could be unveiled for the cameras.  However, we cannot help but feel suspicious about the whole thing.  The electromagnetic levitation requires a particular type of surface to float on.  In the video, the guy appears to be doing so on concrete, which doesn’t seem to make sense.  Maybe there is a secret to the smoking sides of the hoverboard.  They must contribute towards its function in some aspect.

Check out the video below and see what all the fuss is about!

The Basics of Ferrofluids

Posted by Brian (Team UV) on July 2, 2015
Posted in: Presentations. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Ferrofluid sculpture. Photo Credit: P.Davis, et al. (FYFD)

Today, Brian will be filling in for Ketton due to last minute scheduling issues, we apologize for the post delay.

Ferrofluids are quite complex fluids that display interesting behavior in the presence of magnetic fields.  These ferromagnetic fluids are created through the colloidal suspension of ferromagnetic particles of the nano-scale.  What does this all mean? In simpler terms, you essentially take tiny (nano-scale, or on the scale of a nanometer/a billionth of a meter; think the size of the base width of a single strand of DNA) magnetic particles and disperse them homogenously (or evenly) throughout a carrier fluid in a way so that the particles are fully wetted (meaning that the particles surfaces are fully coated by the liquid, without other particles in contact with them).

Once the ferrofluid has been created, the next step is as simple as subjecting the fluid to a magnetic field, at which point the ferrofluid becomes magnetized.  As the ferrofluid begins to be affected by the magnetic field, it wants to follow this field and comply with its geometry; basically, the fluid wants to become shaped like the field it is being subjected to, but there is a problem: the fluid has surface tension.  Because the fluid has cohesive bonding between liquid molecules, the molecules are very strongly attracted to each other on the molecular scale.  This should make sense to you, as when you run your hand through water (for example), you are able to readily cause bulk disturbances (you can split up the water on the large scale), but try as you might, you will not be able to split the water apart on a molecular scale (the smallest you can get water to by hand is tiny visible droplets, which are still collections of a ridiculously large amount of water molecules (on the order of sextillions, or thousands of thousands of thousands of thousands of thousands of thousands of thousands!).

Surface tension. Photo Credit: Wikipedia.org

Because of the aforementioned strong attraction between the liquid molecules, fully immersed liquid molecules are pulled on by other molecules in all directions, as shown above in the picture.  However, the molecules on the surface are only pulled on by molecules around and below (but not above) them, leading to a breach in the equilibrium and causing the water to be pulled in the direction of the rest of the water (hence the curved water surface exhibited in the above diagram).  So, armed with this knowledge of how surface tension works, we can revisit the ferrofluids and figure out what is going on.

Ferrofluid and magnet, separated by glass. CLICK TO EXPAND TO SEE THE SPIKES BETTER! Photo Credit: Wikipedia.org

The magnetic field wants to push the ferrofluid outwards, but the ferrofluid itself wants to pull itself back inwards towards the liquid base due to the surface tension, all while gravity is also resisting the spike formation (this kind of interaction is explained through the normal field instability).  At some point all of these forces equate and the fluid is said to be in equilibrium.  The result of this?  Really cool looking spikes in the ferrofluid as shown above.  This gets even cooler when sculptures are created (as in the top picture) by using shaped bases and manipulating the shape of the magnetic field.  It should be noted that art is most definitely not the only application for these fluids; in fact, ferrofluids also find application as: liquid seals around the shafts of spinning hard disks/drives, as a convective heat transfer fluid for wicking away heat in small scale and low gravity application, as an imaging agent in some medical imaging techniques (especially magnetic resonance imaging, MRI), as friction reducing agents, as mass dampers to cancel out vibrations, and even as miniature thrusters for small (nanoscale) sattelites!

So there you have it, another awesome engineering phenomenon!  Please tune in Sunday for Ketton’s last Open Mind post and remember to continue following us at EngineeringAFuture.com when Engineering A Future (EAF) launches on Monday, July 13th!  Enjoy the video below, created by altering the magnetic field in a ferrofluid sculpture!

Why Is There a Tiny Hole in Airplane Windows?

Posted by Ketton (Team UV) on June 30, 2015
Posted in: Well Read. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments
screen shot 2015-05-31 at 1.11.51 pm

Breather hole in an airplane window. Photo Credit: interestingengineering.com

As many of you are aware, we are in the transitioning phase of this website as we close out TeamUV.org and transition to EngineeringAFuture.com over the next two months, so this will be Ketton’s last Well Read post here at Team UV, but not to fear, there are still two months of posts left here and the same types of articles will be carried over onto EAF (Engineering A Future), so without further ado, please enjoy the following:

Before we go any further into the purpose of the “breather hole”, we will first check out how a window in a pressurized passenger cabin is set up.  As shown in the Boeing 737 maintenance manual (the most widely produced jet airliner in aviation history), the window structure consists of three layers of acrylic – a tough, transparent and flexible resin – although only two of them have an actual structural function.

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Airplane window configuration. Photo Credit: interestingengineering.com

These structural layers are the intermediate and outer ones – while the inner layer (called “scratch pane”) only serves as a buffer between the passengers and the structure of the window itself.  These layers prevent the cabin from reaching the external pressures that, depending on altitude, are too low for the vital functions of the human body.

Basically, the primary structural window guarantees the cabin remains at a constant pressure equivalent to an altitude of 7,000 feet, which is still quite acceptable for the body.  However, in most cases, only the last acrylic layer is responsible for ensuring such conditions; the intermediate layer is just there for extra safety.  Having said that, let us get back to the mysterious little hole.

As can be noted in the diagram shown above, the breather hole is located in the middle layer of the window.  This little puncture acts as a bleed valve ensuring that the pressure between the last two layers and the cabin always remains the same.  This is necessary as a way of preserving the middle layer (the extra safety one) so it is only exposed to severe pressure differences in cases of emergency – that is, if the last layer the window is fractured in some way.

The breather hole also serves to prevent freezing and fogging between the outer layers of the window.  Of course, that doesn’t always work since it is not rare to find photographs showing some frost on the windows.