Project Management Jan 23
This week’s assignment was two-fold: First, construct a website to track my progress throughout the semester and merge that site with the Fab Archive. Second, design/sketch a possible semester project.
Obviously this website represents my attempt at the first target. EDITED 2/12: I [originally] decided on a wordpress.com site simply because I have some limited experience using it before and since I thought I would be doing a fair share of new things this class, I might enjoy some familiarity while I can. [After some issues with the size of my website/files on the mercurial server I have been advised to switch to this getsimple page. I hope it looks as pretty as my old site]. As for linking this site to the Fab Archive through Mercurial, as of this posting, I’m pretty lost on how to do that. If anyone in the class ever reads this, you’ll know I was at least somewhat successful.
As for the second target, it was surprisingly intimidating to be told “You have the capability to make (almost) anything, what do you want to make?” Through several days of soul searching I have come up with a few ideas, though I may hold Dr. Gershenfeld to his word that these ideas do not necessarily need to materialize into my actual final project.
Final Project Idea #1
I first thought about the problems I often run into the Physics classroom. Physics, more so than a lot of other classes, has a lot of concrete applications. When you talk about how fast or how far and object moves, you can actually move an object to do it and investigate what happens. This usually happens in the laboratory setting and is usually pretty effective. Outside of these laboratory settings however, the problems and situations that we deal with can be relatively abstract for 14-15 year olds to grasp. They can plug numbers into a formula but often struggle with what the result actually means. When we do kinematics problems, it would be very helpful for them to have a physical manipulative to help them visualize their results. My first project idea is a “Kinematics Car.” It consists of a robotic vehicle that follows input directions for the different variables in the kinematics equation x = 1/2at^2 + vit. The student can input values for time, initial velocity, and acceleration and the car will travel for the appropriate distance. Likewise the students could input values for distance, acceleration, and initial velocity and the car will travel for the appropriate time. There would need to be limits to these values as constrained by power options for velocity/acceleration and time/distance considerations for a room. Having never done anything with robotics/engines/programming, I’m not sure how much of this is feasible, but it’s worth a shot investigating.
Final Project Idea #2
My other job outside of teaching is Tournament Director for Midwest Ultimate. We organize and run Ultimate frisbee tournaments. For those of you wondering what that might entail, imagine a soccer tournament, but without the ease of simply going to a soccer park and having everything already set up. Our company must rent out space, and since the fields we use for Ultimate and differently sized than soccer, we must measure, line, and paint our fields before play. It is the single most time consuming part of pre-tournament set up. For an average tournament with 16 teams, we must spend roughly 3 hours prepping 8 fields to be painted. While I’m sure some will read this and roll their eyes at my obviously huge problem, it’s our job, there’s only a few of us, and if I can help make it easier, I’m happy to try. My second project idea is a programmable robot that can, based on the dimensions of a field input into it, roam the perimeter of the field marking the corners (with paint?/little flags?) and also report back on any elevation changes during its trip (no one wants to play on a slanty field). Using a computer programmed robot would save us time, manpower, and hopefully increase the accuracy beyond what we are capable of by just walking with ropes and eyeballing it.
