It's a bird... It's a plane... it IS A PLANE

Just because it's summer, it doesn't mean I stop building. For fun, me and my friend, Kevin, decided to build a plane.

We started off by looking up some videos on YouTube, Kevin already knew some accounts that specialized in aero engineering videos. As all designs, we dimensionally diagramed the plane, and figured out exact lengths, heights and spaces for all the pieces. We decided to have all the electronics in the front, Velcrod down to the base of the foam core box. The propeller sticks out from the front. As we diagramed, we also chose a curved type of wing, thicker towards the front of the plane.

The next step was to build it. I got started on the body (having the dimensional diagrams in front of me really helped) and the tail, while he built the wings. The tail pieces were easy to glue on, the wings were a different story... because the design of the wing involved bending back foam core, it wasn't fully lined up with the body, so there was a gap between the two. We used hot glue as our adhesive, which kept dripping in between the space. Now, if you try to find the center of gravity of our plane, its slightly heavier on the left side.

The only thing that is left is to attach servo motors to the flaps on the plane, program it, and to add landing gear... it shouldn't take too long! (Although we always say we can finish it quickly and it takes us way longer than predicted!)

Pictures of it flying coming soon... I hope.

Seattle March for Science

I attend a STEM school, so science is a core part of my education. Science is essential to us, our health, economy, environment, safety …basically everything.

On Earth Day 2017 (April 22) I participated in the March for Science organized in Seattle, along with more than 600 cities around the world. I was very excited to be part of it, to witness so many people coming together to support the role of science in our world. Scientists, teachers, researchers, students, people of all ages and backgrounds marched together in a call for proper funding for scientific research and education. I even had some fun, I noticed so many clever posters, that combine creativity and humor into powerful messages.

We marched for a day, but that doesn't make science important only on that date, be aware... science is everywhere.

CSRSEF

CSRSEF stands for Central Sound Regional Science and Engineering Fair. I participated in it and came out in second place for my category of Environmental Engineering. I built a device (left) that would harness the wave energy and convert the up and down movement of a rod to a generator that would spin to light an LED. Overall I felt pleased and also entered into WSSEF (Washington State Science and Engineering Fair)... results on that coming soon!

Simple Power of Words

This year, I am in an Environmental Engineering class - basically a repeat of AP Environmental Science. This year I have a teacher who is definitely managing to change people's behavior and mindset about environmental issues. This teacher managed to inspire me enough to inspire my mom to make changes around the house.

1. Clothes lines to air dry clothes
2. Compost bucket in the kitchen
3. Turning off the lights when leaving a room
4. LED lighting (which I found out from this class that LED stands for Light Emitting Diode)

These are just the few simple examples that can really make an impact and I hope you can change some of your habits as well.

Since the US is no longer passing laws to accord with the Paris COP 21 carbon emitting standards, our school decided to take initiative and reduce carbon emissions to below that level on our own. Here is the link to that, check it out to see how you can take it a step further:
http://www.schoolsunder2c.org/

1990's Style Pictures

When is the last time you saw a Polaroid camera? Okay, yeah they are all over the place, but a while ago I found an actual Polaroid, made by that company from many years ago... when is the last time you saw that? I recently got film for it (which is way more expensive than the now-popular polaroid cameras), and I took a few pictures and it works! Technology has changed so much over the past 30 years, now we can just snap a thousand pictures and hope that one looks good, but at that time, you could only snap one and hope you don't over/under expose it, hope the lighting is right, hope that the film did not touch light when it was not supposed to. Wow!

Remotely (underwater) Operated Vehicle (ROV)

For an afterschool program, a few students and I are designing an underwater vehicle that will accomplish certain tasks. At first, we couldn't decide if we were going to enter the robot into a competition, or just release it in a nearby lake for fun, so we decided on both. Either way, we were invited to take a tour and get advice from the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory (UW-APL), and they showed us some of their ROV's. The big yellow one in the middle is a glider which spends four hours going down and four hours going up in a V-shape, so there is no communication with it - they have lost quite a few. The smaller blue looking device on the left is similar to the one we are building, and there will be wire communication to a control panel outside of the water.
Just a side note: without pre-knowledge or reading this, it would be hard to decode the sentence: "We went to the UW-APL to get advice on our ROV". I find it funny how many terms have become shortened.

Hexaflexagon

Orange, purple, green, orange, purple, g-- wait, how many sides does a piece of paper have? Why are there three colors?? These are hexaflexagons... a term I have heard every sixth period for the whole school year because my math teacher is obsessed with them.

There are some other fun videos that demonstrate why exactly these work, and some with even more than three sides! Check them out:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIVIegSt81k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paQ10POrZh8&t=4s

 

My math teacher also decided to have fun with this (as if these are not already fun) by showing us these funnier videos on hexaflexagons (warning, video four may cause hunger):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmN0YyaTD60

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTwrVAbV56o