HW #1

1a: Volume of a barbell

1b: Surface Area of a Barbell

2: Ideal Gas Law vs. van der Waal's Equation

3a: Calculating S of a circuit at R = 800 ohm

3b: Calculating S for R between 100 and 1000 (increments of 100)

3c: Refining R into increments of 10 between 600 and 700

3c: Refining R into increments of 1 between 630 and 640

4a: Calculating the force exerted by the Earth on the Moon

4b: Calculating the magnitudes of force between Earth and the Moon at various radii r

5a: CO2 emissions per year for various vehicles with different mpg

5b: Yearly fuel costs for various vehicles with different mpg

Blog Post #2 for Thursday 08/27/2015

The following images are computations written in Matlab from the various exercises and practice examples in class on Thursday 08/27. 

Mars Climate Orbiter exercise: lbf vs N

Vector addition, and use of the dot product.

Mars Climate Orbiter Exercise: lbf vs N (final table)

Mars Climate Orbiter Exercise: lbf vs N (part 2)

Creating a vector and using the dot product to perform calculations.

Using the logspace function

Performing other various operations on a vector

Creating vectors and using the linspace function

Blog Post #1 for Tuesday 08/25/2015

5 tips on how to control your human robot. 

For this exercise, we broke off into pairs and half of the class stepped outside while the other class stayed in. The pairs of people outside the classroom were designated as either robot or operator, and everybody inside were simply observers. When the robot/operator pairs came inside, the "robot" was blindfolded and guided through a series of obstacles through vocal commands given by its operator. Pictured above are five tips on how to best guide the "robot", which can be translated into the world of programming, since a computer will literally do whatever you tell it to do.

First problem solving exercise from lecture.

 In this example from the lecture, we were given a set of time intervals over a certain period of time (every 30 seconds for 5 minutes), as well as a set of corresponding temperatures for each time increment. Before doing anything else, we first had to state the problem. After that, we identified the known values to input into the system as well as the outputs needed from the system. Next, we developed a simple algorithm to obtain the desired output, and tested the algorithm to make sure it worked.

Problem solving exercise for 12m egg drop.

In this exercise, we were given an egg, 20 straws, 50cm of tape, and a piece of printer paper. We were instructed to design and build an apparatus that would allow the egg to fall safely from a height of 12 meters without breaking. Pictured above is the problem solving exercise that we did before actually building the egg dropping device, as well as the equation used to determine the time elapsed through the duration of the collision.

The 100% success was not our actual prediction (I simply forgot to photograph the last white board), as there were several key failure predictions that we made. The first was that the apparatus would land sideways, which would definitely cause a failure as most of our padding was on the bottom. The second prediction was that the "parachute" would detach from the device due to air resistance and cause the apparatus to fall at a rate too fast for the cushion to have an effect. The last prediction was that the egg would fall out of the device before landing on the ground, which would obviously mean failure. In the end, we gave ourselves a 75% chance of success, which turned out to be a little bit to confident. Our device was unsuccessful, as the egg cracked on impact with the ground; however, we learned many valuable lessons in engineering from such a simple exercise.