Week 6: Day 3

Today I continued to edit and perfect the final presentation to get it ready for Friday.  We had our final Pizza lunch and talk which were always very nice. The afternoon was jam packed getting our final presentations to practice tomorrow to Joe by the end of the day but we got it done. Almost ready to present!!

Week 6: Day 2

Today I continued to work on my final presentation and attempted to fix our broken light source. However I was unable to fix it so that was not good.  After lunch Angela and I presented our presentation to Aly who gave us great feedback and also really liked our progress. So now we are just finishing up and getting ready for Friday!!

Week 6: Day 1

THE FINAL WEEK HAS COME!! This will be a stressful and jam packed week filed with perfecting and practicing our final presentation.  However it will be a great experience to be under a fair amount of pressure to finish on a deadline.  Today i tried to fix the light sours which didn't work out so we will need to get a new light but we do have a temporary light source (not very good quality) just so that the system is working on friday.  Unfortunately,  it looks like we may have to ditch the experiment because we cannot move on without a better quality light lil the one before.

Week 5: Day 5

Today was a fairly slow day which was mainly due to our light sours breaking so we can't progress with the experiment we and planned so we just working on our final presentation.  Angela and I are nearly done with it and are going to begin to practice it next week.  Our final friday cookout was a great one with plenty of food and even some cookies brought by Angela!! we played ultimate frisbee misted of volleyball which was good to change it up.  After lunch I continued on the presentation.

Week 5: Day 4

Today was another slow day at RIT. Not much was able to get done due do the light sours on our camera breaking. This will halt any progress on our experiment because we need pictures for the experiment and without the light no pictures can be taken.   Tomorrow we will talk to Gary about the light and the experiment to see where things stand. Other than that, we visited Yiqun in the Imaging Systems lab to see how they were doing.

Week 5: Day 3

Today, Angela and I walked in to see the can of adhesive that we have been needing which was a great sight. So we immediately pack up our stuff and headed outside to finish the inside of our box (we had to go outside so our room didn't get filled with horrible gasses). That worked very well and now we are letting it set overnight and hopefully tomorrow we will have a completed box. After lunch we went to a couple of talks by the REU students here which we actually very interesting. And finally i left at 3 to go play Footgolf with a few of my friends before my brother heads off to college.

Week 5: Day 2

Today was a slow day at work.  In the morning I worked on the power point and started to begin going through my slides. I had to leave at 11 to go get my military ID which took much longer than expected and i got back to around 2. After that, Angela had already left so i spent the afternoon with Anna and Reagan (two other inters) down in their lab and kept looking at my powerpoint and got to see what they were working on and how they are progressing!!

Week 5: Day 1

Today was a very productive day.  In the morning Angela and i went over the the engineering building's machine shop to get a piece of plexiglas cut for our case.  After that we ate lunch with a bunch of the other interns which is always a good time.  After luck we started and completed an expedient involving a component of our system called the knife edge.  Its purpose is to give contrast to the images so we did a test to see how the amount of light it covers relates to the amount of contrast in the image. So overall the day went smoothly and well.

Week 4: Day 5

Today was a very short day for me.  We started off presenting our outlines for our final presentation which gave us some very helpful information to improve our presentation. Today, Angela brought in her friend Katie so we showed her around some of the other labs which brought us right up until lunch. Like every other friday lunch was very fun and a great way to end the week.  I left after lunch so that wrapped up my day.

Final Presentation Outline

Title: Schlieren Imaging System

Background/ Principals:               

-Reflection vs. Refraction

-Basic Setup (with and without air pocket)

-Camera focuses on mirror

Objective:

-Original system (Pros/Cons)

 -Goals

-Our Solutions/designs

Final Design:

-Video of Assembly

-Possible additions/attachments (iPhone/Color Wheel)

-Case

-Before and after pictures

Week 4: Day 4

Today started with continuing to work on our box now that we have all the materials.  We still have to clean up the outside of it and finish the inside of it to perfect it. Then at 11 all of the interns went on a great bike ride over to the U of R.  We went to Mt. Hope Cemetary and visited the graves of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony.  Then we ate lunch in the college-town and rode back. Although very hot and exhausting, it was a fun time to bond with the inters.  Very fun day with all my new friends!!!

Week 4: Day 3

Today started off fairly slow with Angela and I trying to design a carrying case for our system while also keeping costs down.  This was difficult because believe it or not foam is actually fairly expensive.  However, to our surprise and appreciation, Bob and Joe brought us in a box and foam that will do exactly why we want it to do.  A huge thanks to Jeff Pelz for donating these materials to us and saving us money at time!!! So once the materials came in we got to work immediately on making the box how we want it to be.  So although a slow start to the day it ended up being very productive and got us moving.

Week 4: Day 2

Today was fairly slow and I worked on writing up our progressions and continued to design the carrying case for our system.  Gary liked our ideas for the case so we are going to look into buying the materials for them to start building it.

Week 4: Day 1

Today Angela and I spent the day working on the things we talked about at the meeting of friday with Gary and Aly.  First, we are designing a carrying case for the system.  This will greatly improve portability as if all will have a specific place to go and easily be stored.  Second, we are conducting an experiment that will test the relationship between the position of the knife edge and the amount of contrast of the image. This will give people a better grasp on the purpose of the knife edge and ultimately the whole system.  Finally, we worked on documenting our work in writing so that by the end of the internship we have something to show off our work.

Week 3: Day 5

On Friday Angela and I spent the morning preparing our presentation to Gary and Aly which occurred later in the day.  This was a checkup on our designs for them to understand our thought process while going through the design stage. Like every other friday, we had the cookout and volleyball game during lunch which was a blast as always.  The presentation was after lunch and went well.  Gary and Aly liked our ideas and our final solution.  We also talked through an outline for our final presentation which is shaping up very well.  Finally, I did an eye test for Nargess Hassani to help with her research which ended my day. overall it was a fun and productive day!

Week 3: Day 4

Today started off with a mini campus tour by Bob showing some of us the buildings around global village. Then Dr. Rodger Dube gave a great presentation of space weather and the impact it has and could have on the earth.  He is making an early detection system so that our plant is not caught of guard from space weather that could possibly take 10 years to recover from and while out all technology in the mean time. After, Angela and I worked on a presentation for Gary and Aly tomorrow which also took up our afternoon.  The day in all was pretty fun and went by quickly!

Week 3: Day 2

What a long, 14 hr day!!! It was fun tho. I started the day drawing up a prototype of a carrying case for the system on inventor which went well. After lunch Angela came in and we worked of our presentation and writing for Gary and Aly. At 6, the other interns and 1 all got in a bus and drove down to an observatory in the Bristol hills which was very fun. A few of us went hiking in the woods which was fun and adventurous. The night was great to bond with the other interns and get to know them better. (We took the picture on the hike)

Week 3: Day 1

Today was very slow and fairly boring.  Our computer stopped working around 10 which hindered our progressions for the rest of the day.  However, I began to draw up a rough sketch of a carrying case that will hold the broken down Schlieren System.  Anna, Reagan and I had lunch out front and enjoyed the beautiful Rochester weather while listening to the upbeat melodies of the chirping birds (very relaxing).  After lunch I finished up the sketch and continued to brainstorm ideas for an iPhone attachment to the system.

Abstract

Imagine being able to see the unseen? What does air hot air actually look like? Well, using a Schlieren Imaging System both of these questions can be addressed.  The basis of a Schlieren Imaging System is to display density changes in air. It is mainly used in aeronautical engineering to analyze aerodynamics of vehicles and aircrafts. However, current systems are very bulky and hard to align. To fix this, for the remainder of the summer Angela and I are going to work on making the Schlieren System more portable and easier to align. We will brainstorm, design and build multiple systems to perfection which will be followed by a testing phase where we will pick the most suitable design for our needs. This will make it easier to bring places and demonstrate how it works and show off how cool optics is!!!

Week 2: Day 2

Today we made some more demos using the schlieren imaging system and wrote our abstracts for our final presentation.  After lunch, Angela and I went over to the Imaging Systems lab and had Kevin and Yiqun show us what they were doing and we did the same for them.  Finally, we attended a thesis defense here which was a great experience to see what it was like.  It was very interesting even though i didn't quite know everything she was talking about.  Overall it was a great day. Now time for some much needed vacation!!!!

Week 2: Day 1

Today was a fairly slow day.  However we worked at building a prototype of our design and began making demos using it.  We still need to perfect the alignment of the system but we are making progress fairly fast.  A couple games of hangman may have been played also (shhh don't tell Bob)!

Week 1: Day 5

Today was the best day so far! Angela and I worked with Inventor (a CAD program) to make our designs more selfexplainitory. Then, lunch was a blast. Getting to cookout and play volleyball with all the CIS people was super fun. Late in the afternoon Angela, Gary, Aly and I had a meeting to go over our progress so far. This went very well and to celebrate a successful week 1 Gary and Aly treated us to some ice cream!!

Week 1: Day 4

Today was pretty slow and Angela and I are continuing the brainstorming and design phase of the process.  We are preparing for a presentation tomorrow to Aly and Gary on our accomplishments so far.

Week 1: Day 3

In the morning, Angela and I kept brainstorming and drew up some designs to improve the Schlierien imaging system. Then we went to a talk about historical document restoration. We ended the day continuing to design the improvements.

Week 1: Day 2

Today was a fun day! The group bonding activity we did broke down some barriers that excited throughout the interns and brought us closer (literally). Angela and I began working/learning/playing with the Schlieren Imaging system!

Week 1: Day 1

Today we took a tour of the area that we will be for the rest of the summer then made a group project on different things that Joe and Bob assigned us to do.  I met with Angela, Gary and Aly to go over our project for the summer: to build a portable schlieren imaging system Angela and I started some background research and getting to know the set up of the Schlieren imaging system.