Rocket launching

Launching the rockets was lots of fun. The launcher that I build work great or so you can say but it did what it was needed for. The launcher was able to hold its pressure at about 80psi which was great because it made the rockets go a great distance. I had some strings attached to some rods so that we would be able to pull them when the pressure was where we wanted it but after a couple of launched it completely fail and I had to resort to hold it with my hands. Holding with my hands was a great idea at the time up until I got wet from the multiple rockets that were launched but it was worth it. It seemed like everyone was having fun watching some rockets fly and others completely failing. Josh of course won in the achieving the maximum height then Amanda's daughter and I came somewhat close to josh but we didn't beat him. Since we did fairly decent josh announced that he would be buying shirts for the people that came close. The shirt will have the robotics logo along with a sub tittle of projectile specialist. 

The video is a bit messed up but you can somewhat see how high the rockets went.

The wait is over

It took a while but I finally heard back from Estrella Mountain saying that I was accepted. Apparently they forgot about me and I probably would have never found out if I got accepted. Well at least now I know for certain that I will be attending. I was supposed to take part in both a poster and an oral presentations but since i didn't hear back from them for the longest time they told me I was just accepted to the poster presentation which I didn't mind.

The easy part of presenting at Estrella mountain is that I already have a poster from ASU the only thing I need to do is re format it to fit the specifications required since the ASU poster was 36x36in and I need a 36x48 poster. Aside from that rearranging everything on my poster was simple. I also added more things to this poster since I have more space to work with.

The difficult part to this has begun since we are required to write a lab report for our whole project it became a priority since most of us (interns) haven't started it has proven to be somewhat of a challenge. Everyone was freaking out at first because they thought we were going to be writing a 20 page report until Amanda cleared it up and I believe she said somewhere in the 8 page range.

Testing our rockets

Well it doesn't look like much but this puppy can fly, not very high but enough to make an impression. The first launch went pretty well and surprisingly as it was coming down it flew like an airplane and it was awesome. To make it go to a higher altitude I had to add weight to the nose cone and I did that by tapping washers to the cone. I had to make so that the washers sat on the outside because there was no way I would be able to put them inside. I made 2 rockets and both flew but the second was pretty crappy it was too heavy coming down like a lawn dart.
One of the challenges we had to face was in regard to the launcher it was not well designed so it wouldn't hold more than 20 psi before the rocket taking off. I had to come up with a new design that is able to hold pressure up to 80-100 psi so that we are able to achieve a greater distance.
When it comes to filling the bottle I found that it is best to fill a maximum of 1/3 of the bottle to enable it to reach a maximum height. also being able to fly straight is a result from building fins to stabilize it while it is in flight.

Bottle Rockets

This week in robotics we started working on our soda bottle rockets and well let’s just say it is going very slowly. The soda bottle launcher proved to be a bit difficult to build since we didn't let the glue dry on the PVC pipes making not hold any kind of pressure. It held a bit of pressure enough to blast the rocket but it didn't get very high. We also tried various sizes of bottles to see which one would travel the most distance leaving us with a poor demonstration. That good thing though is that we now know what not to do which will help up in the future. Everyone else should watch out because Josh and I our working on a special rocket that should theoretically blow everyone away but I can't give out any more information because it is top secret.

Calibrating the probe that I'm using wasn't as difficult as I thought well when you find the manual it isn't as difficult. Now that it is calibrated I will be able to start collecting data to help my experiment which I have been working on for almost a year.

Estrella mountain student conference is upon us, at least the deadline for the abstract just passed. I submitted my abstract on time and I will do an oral presentation. I signed up for both an oral and a poster presentation. Matt suggested that I should do the oral presentation because he thinks I will be able to get first place based upon the presentations that we viewed during last year’s conference. I am a bit scared and at the same time a bit motivated to do the presentation. The reason for why I'm scared is because presenting to a large group of people is somewhat stressful and also trying not to finish the presentation with "so umm yeah" which a lot of people tend to do.  

Not so great

The past couple of weeks haven't treated me nicely :/ My computer crashed 3 weeks ago and well it's been hard for me to do anything but at least now it's getting fixed. Also during spring break my car broke down so this week has been hard for to get to lab on time during the morning so I haven't been in lab in the morning and well I have minimal hours this week. This week I started working on the submersible attaching the probe that will be reading data from the water. There is also a camera added to the submersible so that I'm able to see where I'm going and to just get an idea of how it is. (Like in Rio Salado or Papago park) 

I also tried testing out the probe that will be attached to the robot but it didn't seem to work out so well mainly because it is old and not calibrated. My next step is to calibrate the probe and test it to see if it is going to allow me to get accurate results. Since the only outside body of water on campus is a fountain I spent a good 30 minutes or so trying to get results but since it wasn't calibrated the results were a bit weird. Everyone kept looking at me like I was weird because I was putting stuff in the fountain but I guess they were just curious heck even public safety paid me a little visit.

Thursday was very interesting because as you all know it's when we have a robotics meeting and well we have a project to try out, 2 projects actually. One of those is build a soda bottle water rocket which is somewhat simple if you don't over think it. The other is making a small boat out of cardboard that should be able to float and move.

Finally

After a long and stressful week I feel somewhat accomplished. On Saturday my team and I participated in the vex robotics competition, going in we set a low goal of only scoring 5 points and yet we went above and beyond scoring an average of 40 points per game. We made it to the finals against Scottsdale since we beat ASU's engineering team and also Embry riddle school of aerospace engineering. Over all we did great, got second place and we were only beat by 2 points.

On Monday I went back to ASU again to present my poster project. It was a long day but the good thing was that we only had to present for a short amount of time. Everyone that went did a great job and most people presented to 2 or more judges, I only presented to one but he asked so many questions, most unrelated to my project. All in all I'm glad I got it over with because I don't think I would be able to do it for very long. In the end it all worked out pretty nice, except when I found out my laptop broke which was horrible :(. Hopefully I get it replaced in the next couple of weeks so I can be able to do my work.

Now it's time to start a new project which I have somewhat started already. I will be working with submersibles to try and collect data from the bottom of a lake or pond. This next project is going to be an interesting one.

Busy week

This week has been a stressful week because of everything we had to complete for the ASU conference. The poster that was for the ASU conference was completed on time and it looks pretty good, well it looks pretty good to me at least. Also this week has been a crunch time for robotics since the week before the robot wasn't working properly after all the alterations it had, I spent a good amount of time trying to fix it and get ready for the competition this weekend on Saturday also at ASU. I feel good about the competition we have a functioning robot well we have 1 out of 2 functioning robots, and it looks like it's going to do well. I spent a lot of time helping individuals both in robotics, and lab. I helped a good amount of people that were still working on their poster as well as helping them upload them to dropbox since a lot of the interns hadn't used it before.

This week end, and next week are going to take up a lot of time. On Saturday the the vex robotics competition is going to take place at ASU, and after that I will be attending an open house on campus. On Monday the 4th I will be heading back to ASU to attend the student conference and present my poster on my project all day long. Then on Friday S-STEM will be going on a field trip to the botanical garden which is awesome because I have never had the opportunity of going, and now that I do I will not be missing out. :)