HYPER lab member Ian Richardson is currently featured on the WSU main homepage. Check out the great article, video clips, and photos here: https://wsu.edu/125/exploration/
Thanks for the great stories and memories Ian!
The best coach I had for reference letters was P.K. Northcutt II, the head of IT at the University of Idaho College of Engineering. I asked P.K. for a reference letter once and almost had an early-life crisis (it was needed). P.K. is not a professor, engineer, or someone in any position of rank or power. Despite that he was able to write — while teaching me how to write — phenomenal reference letters. At the very least, reviewers had to be impressed by my awareness to select exceptionally good letter writers.
So you want me to write you a reference letter? Start here:
I only … » More …
I recently posted about a new concept for the NSF Restructuring Engineering Departments (RED) program that extended CSU’s approach and mapped the core threads to spiral memes (SD). One of the results of this was the ability to work with the WSU Grand Challenge research themes. In this post I’ll specify what this mapping could look like in a hypothetical WSU Mechanical Engineering Curriculum. Note that this is not intended to serve as an actual ME curriculum and is simply intended to stimulate conversation.
Ideally the transformation works with our existing curriculum to the greatest extent possible. The current ME course listing is here. … » More …
This just in…
Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal’s resolution passed on September 29th 2015 designating today, 10/08, as National Hydrogen Fuel Cell Day! Hydrogen’s atomic weight is 1.00794 atomic mass units. When rounded we arrive at 1.008. More information on today’s celebration is here: http://www.hydrogenfuelcellday.org/
Some thoughts from the Department of Energy to consider today include:
More than 215 FCEVs traveled 6 million miles in more than 500,000 trips, and 31 FCEV fueling stations completed more than 52,000 refuelings.
Over the past few months, Hyundai and Toyota both introduced their FCEVs, on track with the plans for early commercialization by 2015. Several … » More …
The Washington Joint Center for Aerospace Technology and Innovation (JCATI) produced a video describing our liquid hydrogen conversion for ScanEagle, a product of Insitu. The video can be viewed on-line here:
Spatial and temporal spectrums are useful as a first step to breaking down systems, but quickly run into limits. Energy is likely a particularly useful spectrum to categorize our design alternatives within the context of this project. Consider how the Advanced Research Project Administration for Energy (ARPA-E) classifies energy conversion devices:
Let’s take 15 minutes in our sub-teams and try to fill as many of the squares as possible with designs concepts for our sub-assemblies. An excel version of this is posted to the ME 316 slack thread. If you have an … » More …
With our design specification nailed down, we now begin the process of idea generation. Let’s start with a quick exercise:
Get out a sheet of paper and write down the first thing that comes to your mind when I tell you to think of:
a color,
a hand tool,
a flower,
a piece of furniture.
Let’s see how you did:
😉
Was your color blue or red?
Was your tool a hammer or screwdriver?
Now that we’ve 1) interviewed our customers, 2) reviewed basic literature on the topic, 3) divided the project into sub-assemblies, and 4) began specifying desired traits and characteristic functions of the sub-assemblies, it’s time we merge everything together via tools called Design Structure Matrix (DSM) Methods. Professor Steven Eppinger has published a companion to your textbook on the topic. DSM’s are useful for spotting the connections and relationships in complex systems. Take for example the problem of assessing the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) for the Mars Curiosity Rover:
We used our intuition, post-its, … » More …
Thank you to the National Science Foundation for initiating the Revolutionizing Engineering Departments (RED) program! These $1.5-2 million grants are intended to fundamentally restructure engineering education to increase participation and retention by under-represented groups. This restructuring approach is likely required. Despite substantial programs and efforts to increase participation from these groups, improvements have been modest, at best, and in some cases remain stagnant.
I was recently inspired during a presentation by Tony Maciejewski, Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering departments at Colorado State University (CSU), who received one of the early awards. CSU is restructuring around three core ‘threads’ that transcend the … » More …
Today is Louis Henry Sullivan’s birthday. Sullivan’s wiki-page lists him as a famous American Architect widely considered the “Father of the Skyscraper.” In an 1896 essay Sullivan wrote:
Whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight, or the open apple-blossom, the toiling workhorse, the blithe swan, the branching oak, the winding stream at its base, the drifting clouds, over all the coursing sun, form ever follows function, and this is the law. Where function does not change form does not change. The granite rocks, the ever-brooding hills, remain for ages;the lightning lives, comes into shape, and dies in a twinkling.
… » More …
