Outreach to Young ladies

I just had the privilege of speaking to eight special young ladies (elementary school aged) who were brought to UH by their teacher to talk to them a little about engineering and science.
My main example was, of course, the balloon research science I am currently doing right now!

Attached here is the slideshow presentation I showed them:


They were very curious girls and had lots of questions for me, which I was very happy to answer. I wanted to make it clear to them I had been a little girl just like them, and that in many ways I still am. I talked about what I love to do and what I like to learn about, and that I got into engineering so I could solve problems.
I didn't talk about math, and I didn't use the word science except maybe twice the entire hour I was speaking to them.
Instead, we had a two-minute dance party to finish off my presentation to the requested song of, "Everything is Awesome!" from the Lego Movie.

I taught them how to do the UH "Whose House?" chant. I talked to them about engineering, and how it's in space, underneath our feet, and even inside of our bodies. They had wonderful feedback for me, such as, "Do you think that the Earth is kind of like an engineer, um, because it helps people to live?" to which I thoughtfully responded that yes, yes I do think the Earth is kind of like an engineer.
Some were very talkative, others needed to be coaxed. Some of them didn't know what they wanted to do, one wanted to be an archaeologist, and another wanted to be an actress when she grew up.

By the end of the talk I mentioned that I do this even with high school kids, and since I had talked to them a little about what Industrial Engineering was, they might know more than some high school students!

I talked about how college was a hard four years to commit to and that deciding to do so was important and felt really good to be near the end of graduating. And I mentioned that engineering classes won't leave you feeling bored by the end of it, because you will always be learning something new. Most of them responded very strongly to that - they don't like being taught things they already know!

I brought a few props: namely, my prototype breadboard and the "in package" prototype that I purchased from http://www.auroralchorus.com/wr3gx2.htm . I told them that I would be finding ways to listen to the light from the aurora borealis. That got them pretty excited.
And I noticed, it got ME pretty excited too. I'd never really thought about what I was doing in that way before. From the big picture viewpoint, what I'm doing is incredibly exciting, and I don't think 10 year old me would have ever guessed I would *REALLY* get a chance to do this.

What a wonderful opportunity! I am so thankful I got to be a part of teaching those girls a little bit about the big world of engineering.

I am hoping to follow up with the same group of students after we come back from Alaska, so I can show them some of the results of what we did.

Log for Jan 18, 2015

Mostly administrative stuff accomplished today. We are scrambling to get everyone's schedules organized, and determine what times we can all meet throughout the next few weeks.

It's a late night here for me. We should all be anticipating more and more of these, since our deadlines are not moving, and our personal lives (not to mention exam schedule) will continue to get in the way.

Cheers to all the late-night workers.

See you guys tomorrow!

-Rachel Gamblin

Crazy Friday! (Jan 16)

WHEEEEW! These past two days have been crazy.
Today is Friday. Classes start on Tuesday. I ordered cabling yesterday. We're looking for houses in Alaska. We're figuring out everyone's scheduling. we're planning regular meetings. We're finalizing payload structures.

I was here last night with Chris and Michelle til 7pm.
I'm here in the lab now with Hamza, Arian, Daniel Canales, and Dr. Bering. John just came in.

This is gonna be crazy next few weeks!

-Rachel Gamblin

Log [12/09/2014]

Log [12/09/2014]:
It's finals week, which is a mixed bag for most of us. Some are completely done with finals, or the end is in sight, so we have more time to devote to the project. Others are swamped and virtually unreachable. We send out our best wishes to our team, and to all other students going through the finals-week(s) struggle!

We have had some progress and updates this week so far, so here we go! 

Data:

Poster update: We did a mock presentation of our first draft of the poster that John, Erika, Daniel Canales, and Hamza will be taking to the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting in San Francisco next week. We got some great feedback and are looking into finalized printing options.

John Cao and Erika Marrero do a review our AGU poster with Dr. Dunbar and Dr. Bering

SD Shield update: We believe it was a hardware error (or soldering problem) that caused out heartache from Thanksgiving. Using another Adafruit datalogger shield we have successfully initialized the SD card and ran a very simple example sketch.

ADC Shield update: We have been fighting with the Iowa Scaled Engineering ADC shield and being baffled by the lack of response when we run the basic sketch that comes with the library. After a weekend of confusion, we verified that one of the jumpers on the board was misarraged. With that mystery solved, it is now time to delve into the library code and learn how to use this two-in-one multiplexer and analog-to-digital converter!

VLF Update: I worked with Dr. Bering today to get to work on the OrCAD layout file. We started from the OrCAD Capture project file, specifically the schematic: where we specific the type of connector I wanted to put into the circuit. However, when we tried to look at the footprint (i.e. the actual shape we wanted for the connector and where it should go on the board) using OrCAD layout, there was a conversion error. Dr. Bering understands what happened better than I do. We'll get back at it tomorrow.

DC EF Update: I'm not smart enough to understand what Chris is doing, but he says he feels really good about the work he's been able to get done with him and Dr. Bering in the lab at the same time, so I'm excited to his end result! He also is optimistic about having a test-able device by January 11th.

Goals For Next Few Days:
- Get ADC shield for Arduino to intake multiple sensors and write to SD card shield (test using power supplies)

- Finalize poster layour

- Print poster

Written By:
Rachel Gamblin (USIP-UH member)

Meet the USIP-UH Team

Ever wonder who the future researchers of tomorrow are? What they look like? What they study and what they do after class? Well here's a psot devoted specifically to you! And anyone else who might be interested in who is behind all this balloon science.

From left to right in the photo, going through the back row, and then looping back from right to left in the front is:

Daniel Canales:

Likes biking, moutaineering, and working hard as a mule. Studying Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Houston.

Sikender Shahid:

Likes coding in his spare time. Arduino projects and Codecademy? Basically a pass-time for him. Studying Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston.

Edgar Bering:

(wait! He's not a student! ...Check him out here: http://nsmn1.uh.edu/ebering/ )

Hamza Ahmad:

DotA 2 fiend. Studying Electrical Engineering at the University of Houston.

Chris Bias:

Nintendo DS fiend, and an all-around jolly old chap! Best hand-writing of any guy on campus. Studying Physics and Math (double major!) at the University of Houston.

John Cao:

A guy who speaks softly, but jokes strongly. Studying Environmental Science at the University of Houston.

Erika Marrero:

Strong lady who isn't afraid to tell it like it is. Studying Geosciences at the University of Houston.

 Daniel Hermosillo:

Likely to be found any given day on campus. Studying Chemical Engineering at the University of Houston.

Michelle Nowling:

Michelle is new to the team, but she is diving right in with her astronomy based project to be revealed this Friday. She has her very own website detailing all about the cool research she has already been apart of. We're so glad to have her on our team! Her website: http://michellenowling.weebly.com/

 Rachel Gamblin: 

A senior in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Houston. She likes to swim and has a long term goal of competing in a triathlon before she is 25. More reliably, she tends plants in the UH greenhouse, and studies for exams in the Engineering Computing Center. Also she has a tendency to talk for long hours about the various projects she's working on, so for any questions about USIP-UH, being a SWE officer, or UH engineering in general, feel free to contact her at rbgamblin@uh.edu or at (832) 890-9731. She is (normally) very friendly, and always likes to help people out! Obligatory: She is also looking to start a mechanical engineering career in the Aerospace industry.

Megan Pina (gray UH shirt):

Likely to be found saving a dog in need or putting out a family fire any given day. Studying Geosciences at the University of Houston.

Houston- we have a launch!

We don't launch rockets, we launch balloons. Sometimes those balloons have VLF wave recorders, sometimes they have arduinos, and sometimes they have air-tight Astrobiology sample catchers!
We had a launch just today with our very own Daniel Canales, the leader of the Astrobiology team which is attempting to create a device that will help look for creatures (generally microscopic in size) who can survive the incredibly harsh environments of the magnetosphere.

Check out the video here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOpdsAu_lxU&feature=youtu.be

The balloon went up... and then came back down. Into a rancher's yard! Negotiations ensued to retrieve the scientific device (and data!) from the rancher.

All's well that end's well, and now we are patiently awaiting the results from Daniel's report about this test flight!

Arduino logging shield woes

Worked with John Cao today trying to continue the work that Hamza and I did on Friday.

What we did on Friday:
We used a stack (Arduino UNO base, then Adafruit Datalogger shield on top, then ARD-LTC2499 shield on top of that) and connected a sensor (Gaseous Compounds NO2 sensor, which has two HI outputs and two LO outputs). SD card used was SDHC 32GB.
We powered the sensor through the 3.3V port on Arduino pins (SPI bus??), and connected all the GRND to various ground ports.
Then we put the HI inputs to the analog channels (A1 and A2) on the ARD-LTC shield. We used the basic example sketch that came with the ARD-LTC and its corresponding libraries.
Hamza set the output of the gaseous sensor to one of the pins and viewed the output on the serial monitor. He was getting 1's not the actual data, so we think it was right, but we're not sure.

What we did today (Monday):
We used the same stack described above, and tried get the SD card to work.
We used the "Datalogger" sketch example, set the CS pin to 10, and got the error "Card missing" telling us that it didn't initialize properly.
We used the SD card adapter to plug into my laptop and reformatted the card. We got the same error when we tried again.
We used the "Checkcard" sketch example, and got the same initialization error.
We used a different stack (Arduino UNO base, then Adafruit GPS+logger shield on top) and ran the "Checkcard" sketch example on this stack (which had a different SD card in it, SDHC 8GB) and it worked, revealing the file names and dates stored on the card.
We switch in the 32GB card to this new stack, and the "Checkcard" sketch example also worked.
We did NOT do any work with the MUX/ADC shield or code. Plan is to do that tomorrow with Hamza again.


So... It looks like there is an hardware defect with the Datalogger shield. Unless there is some connection the shield that we have to make in order for it to work that we are forgetting?? Which is a bummer, because it seems like we should buy more Datalogger shields, but what if they're just bad-quality shields with bad manufacturing? Or what if they're so delicate that we will regularly break them? I don't think this should be such a big mystery...

-Rachel Gamblin