Engineering Physics is having election this Thursday and Friday. I’m running in three races. Here are my campaign posters.
If you’re allowed to vote, visit the club sometime on Thursday or Friday. If you have any reason at all not to vote for me, maybe we should discuss things and I’ll convince you why I’m far more qualified to do this job and why I’ll do a much better job of it that the other candidates.
For my final Physics 397 lab I’m working with Andrew Burke and Steve Jim, we’re studying propulsion. The idea is that we ionize air in the presence of a strong electric field, accelerate the electrons in one direction and the cations in the other direction. As a result in the mass difference (more than 10000:1 for atmospheric gasses) There is thrust generated according to Newton’s third law.
The magnitude of the propulsion force depends on how much air is being ionized and the electric field that it is going to be accelerated across (remember that the mean free path in air (SATP) is on the order of microns, not meters). Generating an electric field strong enough to strip electrons from air molecules isn’t all that simple when you imagine how strong it needs to be, but there is a relatively simply way of doing it. A very simple application of Gauss’s Law to an infinite line charge shows that the field goes like (lambda)/(2*pi*eo*r) where lambda is the linear charge density eo is the permittivity of free space, and r is the distance from the axis of the line charge. That means that the electric field gets arbitrarily large as you approach a theoretical line charge.
To charge a very thin wire (good approx of line charge) we just need to include it in a capacitor and put a large voltage across it. We’re just suspending the thin wire (42 gauge magnet wire) above a large radius of curvature conductor (piece of Al foil).
To measure the force generated (as the obvious manifestation of the phenomenon) we’re suspending the apparatus on a pendulum and measuring the angle of deflection from vertical.
Prelimiary tests have shown that we’re not completely out to lunch, we’re deflecting our “flyer” by close to 100 with a mass of many tens of grams if not hundred (haven’t yet measured).
Elections for the Engineering Physics club take place next week, but it’s more of a round of “approvals” by any voters regarding the only volunteers for certain positions. I had planned on running for President but decided following a brief discussion with Ian that I wasn’t going to run against him for the position of President. I would rather see a club that functions properly than have the opportunity to be president for a year. Nominations are as follows:
It’s looking like it should be a good year, success of the Phryge depends on Julian’s cooperation or I’ll have to find an alternate method of doing it myself.
Here’s the first 5 lines for a Eng-Phys club shirt. I just need a witty 6th line to finish it off… I’m just not sure what it should be.
So what is the best last line? We need some new EP gear and I propose that this should be one of our options.
The Tech elective I’ve chosen for the fourth year of my program are:
I’m not choosing the easiest way to get through fourth year, Quantum is going to be a decent time investment, and picking EE351 and EE 470 require having labs when I could get away with choosing one of those courses to have no lab. I think it’s important to keep my feet wet in as many areas as I can so I’m pursuing a range of tech electives rather than aiming at taking all the photonics courses I can, or doing something like hitting all the courses in the IC design series. It’s also worth noting that I’m not registering for EE457, microfabrication. I have some experience on that topic and will get a bit more this coming summer, for that reason I’ll direct my focus elsewhere. If I want to pursue it in grad school I’m not getting all that far behind anyways.
Special thanks to Cayley Webber for all her directing skills in the filming of the latest major motion picture to come out of the Yellow House Studio. Major acting roles played by Josh and Neil.
No Neils were harmed in the filming of this stunt. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Josh.
After spending a good piece of Friday night sitting around at the University Hospital the ultimatum is that my foot is not broken. Neil and I were trying to do XHops and my right foot buckled under my weight and his, the female contingent sent me off to the hospital. After an Xray and hanging around in a bunch of waiting rooms the ultimatum is that it’s not broken.
I tried to stand up when getting out of bed and it completely buckled again under my weight. I need to be careful to really stay off of it.
Webber caught the action on film so it will make an appearance here on the web as soon as she emails me the file.
I was pretty sad when I heard that Cameron Brown was “vomiting from both ends” this past Wednesday. With Ironman New Zealand coming up on Friday (Saturday NZ time) I really hoped he’d be able to race. After all this guy was one of my favorites for Kona in 2006 (ended up 8th in 8:25). I was able to watch the swim online and a couple transitions at Ironman Live. They don’t do quite as extensive of a job there as they do in Kona, obviously there’s not the demand to justify the cost.
Interested in watching the highlight reel, here’s what I found: TVNZ.co.nz
Here’s a high quality musing by James Bell the First:
If an intelligent outside observer is required for a waveform to collapse (and thus for anything to exist), how is the entire universe here? Who is the extra-dimensional intelligent outside observer who makes the waveform of the universe collapse into the form that we experience it in? Is there a God?
