Senior Design Materials

As some of you know, I'm having my Senior Design Project Sponsored by NASA GSFC. Basically, they pay for most of the materials.  So my team's job is to create an "Ultra-Stable Thermal Enclosure"...basically we have to maintain a temperature of +/- 0.1 Celsius.  Never mind the difficulty, look at the toys we got! 

So last week, our mentor sent us a SparkFun Inventor's Kit in order to control the temperature.  "Unlease your Inner Inventor" as it says on the packaging.  Haha. 

So I was reading the website for this product, and it says it's for kids 10+....Let's just say I feel like a little kid again!!!!

Okay, material List. :-)

1. Breadboard. For those who don't know, a breadboard is where you connect your circuit.  Pretty simple, actually.  Look how tiny it is!!! 

2. This thing is pretty cool. You can use it like a touch pad! 

 3. This piece was used in the Nintendo Flex Glove.  Basically, you flex the material, and it changes the resistance, similar to the piece above.  (It works just like a strain gauge, which I used in the Material Performance Lab...I'll have to write about them sometime...)

 4. LEDs! Aren't they cute?

So I totally didn't mean to put these one my homework....it just helped there to be no reflection in the photos...But now that I look at them...I think it's a nice touch...(The math in the background is courtesy of Shigley Hauler Design Work)

KickSat

Yesterday, I saw a fantastic talk at NASA GSFC.  It was about creating Miniature Spacecraft.  Being honest, my first thought panned over to Cloverfield when those spiders were crawling off of the monster....which would go crawl on other planets, preparing the way.  Talk about a SciFi Movie...

So, I was initially skeptical.  However, these small circuits can be spread across space! Let Zachary talk about it...

How cool is this project?! You can have your name on a chip in space?! Sign me up!

Here, he basically talks about the scientific data you can collect within the higher atmosphere or even for other types of signals.  It's definitely in the development stage, but I think there are great possibilities.  

For instance: you could prototype your own circuit board, like you do with SparkFun (it's easy/cheap circuits for you less-geeky peeps ;-) ), and have it transmit a message back to you with, oh-I-don't-know, it's GPS coordinates, the acceleration of the planet it's near, or potentially get atmospheric data from the debris it's flying through.  

I can see myself now...throwing* my mini-chip to the sun to evaluate temperatures there...all by myself...

Think of the possibilities....

*BTW I know this it totally unrealistic, but HEY! I can dream...

Funnies

I think this post will be devoted to nerdy things I find throughout the week.

"Newton and Gauss created everything.  Everyone else is simply tweaking what they said." - Professor Rocke

This last one is actual due to the amount of protest from the group on Facebook called "Trust me, I'm an Engineer."  Although a little bit borderline, I'm glad that someone (a female) updated the picture to show that there ARE female engineers out there. Grassroots at work.