Welcome to POE!

Welcome parents, students, the Medway community, random blog searchers who stumbled across this to the MEDWAY POE BLOG!  I can't wait to get started! There is a lot to talk about, but we'll just start with the basics.

THIS BLOG
This blog will serve as a window for parents and the community to know what is going on here in Principles of Engineering (POE). Students will participate in keeping it up to date. We will also utilize It's Learning, a more comprehesive class website, but more on that later. If you have a Google account, feel free to follow; I suggest you at least subscribe to this blog by entering your email at the right, or by using any of the other subscribe services provided.

WHAT DO I NEED?
We will deal with the syllabus soon enough, but if you're going shopping tonight, this course requires the usual suspects.  I will be providing you with an engineering notebook.  In addition to that, you will need:

• scientific calculator
• writing utensils
• something to organize papers (binder or folder)

I leave the details up to you. Some people like to keep a notebook and a folder; others would rather keep a binder with loose leaf paper and 3 hole punch everything. Use whatever organizational strategies best suit you.
More info to come!  I'm looking forward to a great year!

Today we built marshmallow towers.  Why did we build marshmallow towers?  We'll discuss this more tomorrow, but for now, please watch the following video of Tom Wujec doing a TED Talk about the Marshmallow Challenge.  Think about how these ideas relate to your class, your education, your life.

(Click here if the video does not show up)

Wind Turbine Projects

Congratulations to Derek Johnson, John Williams, and Ben Perry for producing 5.6 V!  (The maximum possible was 6 V)


Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Company Develops Lighting Sheets Consisting Of Tiny LEDs.

Technology Review (10/28, Bullis) reported, "Nth Degree Technologies hopes to replace light bulbs with what look like glowing sheets of paper." The company "makes its light sheets by first carving up a wafer of gallium nitride to produce millions of tiny LEDs-one four-inch wafer yields about eight million of them. The LEDs are then mixed with resin and binders, and a standard screen printer is used to deposit the resulting "ink" over a large surface." The article reported that "on addition to the LED ink, there's a layer of silver ink for the back electrical contact, a layer of phosphors to change the color of light emitted by the LEDs (from blue to various shades of white), and an insulating layer to prevent short circuits between the front and back. The front electrical contact, which needs to be transparent to let the light out, is made using an ink that contains invisibly small metal wires."  

Device Turns Any Surface Into An Interactive Touchscreen.

Technology Review (10/19, Graham-Rowe) reports, "A new prototype can transform a notebook into a notebook computer, a wall into an interactive display, and the palm of your hand into a smart phone display. In fact, researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University say their new shoulder-mounted device, called OmniTouch, can turn any nearby surface into an ad hoc interactive touch screen."

        Popular Science (10/19, Boyle) reports, "A Kinect-style infrared depth-sensing camera builds a dynamic 3-D map of your environment, using reflected infrared light to calculate surfaces even as you move around. The laser pico-projector adjusts accordingly, compensating for the surface's shape and size to prevent distortion." The device "is able to distinguish finger-shaped cylindrical objects, and can sense whether fingers are 'clicking' or hovering over something."
        The New Scientist (10/18, Aron) "One Per Cent" blog also covered the story.