Last Post for the Year!

We are now at the end of the 2013-2014 school year.  I say this every year, but it has gone by fast.

As I have said previously, the EoC for all engineering classes is required per our contract with PLTW.  You will not be eligible to exempt.  However, I am moving it up to this Thursday and Friday.  You should finish your review before Thursday so that you are well prepared.

• You will be given a formula packet (9 pages) that has any formulas that you need on it.  It covers all of the engineering courses that we offer, including much of what we used in CEA (storm runoff, beam formulas, etc.).  
• Beyond formulas, you are allowed one 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper with notes and information that you have handwritten on one side.  I would not waste any space on formulas because of the point above, but steps to working out some of the problems might be nice.  
• The test is in two parts, each with a 40 minute time limit, and both parts are 100% computer-based. There is no written portion or Revit example to do.  
• The test will be used as our final exam, and it is what qualifies you for college credit through Rochester Institute of Technology, the University of Texas at Tyler, and other colleges.  

Don't forget to submit your Comercial Project Portfolio to me. Those were due last week!

Week of May 6

Several students will be out on any given class day due to  AP testing (some sophomores, but mostly juniors and seniors).  Students are working on the commercial project this week.  Wrap up the Revit design and site plan.  Next week, we will start a bit of a review by calculating runoff and beam calculations for our designed building.

We don't have very much new material left in this year.  It has certainly gone fast.  Two weeks from now, we will start thinking about preparing for the final exams, and then finals are May 28-31.  The final for CEA is the End of Course exam that is required by Project Lead the Way for all students.  There will be no exemptions for exams in engineering for the spring semester.  

The good news is that, if you do well in the course and the exam, you will get a letter from me over the summer stating that you have earned the right to get college credit through Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Texas at Tyler, or Texas A&M-Kingsville.  In some cases, those credits can be transferred to another school as a transfer credit.  Check with whichever school you may be interested in applying to see how they will handle it.  You would have to pay the school that is granting you the credit, so you need to decide if it is worth it or not for you.  

The final exam schedule has been released. Be sure to clear up all obligations and get your exemption forms turned in by the deadlines.

Finally, we will be starting an engineering club at RRHS next fall.  Five of our current students attended a summit with the other RRISD schools last week and are anxious to begin working on it.  If you are interested, let me know so that we can notify you right at the start of school (if not before) next year to get it moving quickly.  

I am finished with morning duty for the year, so I should be available most mornings and afternoons through the remainder of the year.  Also, the last Late Start and WOW for this year will be May 22 & 23, so the schedule for the next 2 weeks should be normal.

If you are interested in the Aerospace class that we will have next year, I started the blog for it already.  Yeah.  I'm a little excited about that one.  :-)  I will post updates over the summer for those who signed up to take the class next year.  

Week of April 1

This is the last week of the six weeks, so you need to make sure that all of your work is complete.  If not, we will have tutorials every afternoon and morning this week.  There are no duties or meetings this week.  Only one more six weeks to go, then, after this.  There is no late start or WOW, but that doesn't mean that the schedule is normal all week. Freshmen will be taking the STAAR test on Monday & Tuesday while sophomores will be taking it on Wednesday and Thursday.  The rest of the school will follow a normal schedule missing about 1/4 of the students.

CEA will update the drawings required to finish up the library renovation before moving to the next unit next week.

From here on out, class attendance will be spotty with STAAR tests, TAKS testing (last year of it!), and AP exams.  If you are going to miss, let me know as soon as possible so that we can minimize the effect of your absence.

Journals have been graded along with all of the other assignments from this six weeks.  If you have any missing grades, be sure that you show them to Mr. Peterson or come in for tutorials to complete work this week.

Week of March 25

Spring break is over, and we are in the next-to-last week of this six weeks.  That means that all work needs to be finished by next week (first week of April).  Make sure that you are on top of your grades in the gradebook so that you know where you stand.  We have morning duty this week but will be available after school for tutorials and make-up work.  Next week, we will be available before and after school as usual.  You may take advantage of WOW this week to complete assignments, if you need the computer lab.  There is now WOW next week.  This is your chance before the end of the grading period. 

Don't forget that this Friday is a school holiday.  Enjoy your long weekend with family and friends.  Also, Wednesday is WOW, but Thursday is NOT a late start. 

CEA will do the soil classification lab this week to determine the content of a given soil sample.  We have also started posting videos as a way of delivering instruction.  This will give students more time to perform your work in class, where you have equipment and resources available to you.  Expect that to continue even more through the balance of the year. 

Week of March 4

Have you ever seen a crew working on a construction site or maybe where they are buiding a road and looking through a camera-looking device?  Those are called Autolevels and are used for determining elevation changes on a site where construction is taking place.  We will learn to use the Autolevels and survey the area around RRHS this week in CEA.  Wear comfortable clothes for being outside and moving around.  Make it a goal to get caught up on all of your work before spring break, so that you can come back afterwards without that burden hanging over your head.

Also, be sure to watch the $cholar$hip List tab on this page.  I post information that I get up there that colleges and companies send to me, who are looking for good engineering students.  It includes both scholarships and internships (money tied to a chance to do engineering work over the summer). This is the only paragraph on this post without any mention of spring break.


Next week (March 11 - 15) is spring break. In case you were planning to come to school all week, don't.  Enjoy your week off.

My watch is in the shop. It has a spring inside of it.  If I wind it too tightly, I think the spring breaks.

Week of Feb 18

It is that time of year again - when students begin making choices about classes for next year.  For one thing, if you are planning to take the next engineering elective, know that we will be offering Aerospace Engineering next year.  The RRISD academy model requires that you take IED, PoE and DE, specifically and may take the specialization electives above and beyond that.  Those electives are currently Civil Engineering & Architecture and - now - Aerospace Engineering.  The plan is that we will alternate AE with CEA every other year.  Both of those are showing up on your course selection sheet for 2013-2014.  For now, I would expect that AE will be offered in 2013 and again in 2015.  If you are a sophomore and planning on AE, you should make room in your schedule next year in case it is not offered in 2014.  Freshmen will have plenty of time to take AE in a future year and should definitely take PoE for next year.  If you have any questions about the course sequence, please don't hesitate to ask me.

CEA will continue beam design this week.  You will include the deflection calculations in the process, which will show you that the first beam selected is inadequate in some cases.  The assignment is a bit tedious, but you will know how to make those calculations when it is all over!  :-)

This is the start of a new six weeks.  The year is already 2/3 over and going fast!  Look for report cards to come home late this week.  Also, I graded journals for the six weeks.  If you did not leave yours at school, make sure to do so tomorrow so that I can grade it before grades are finally due.

Parents, we have a student teacher for this semester.  Mr. John Peterson has been with us for a month now and has already been teaching CEA.  He will take on more of the planning and grading responsibilities for my classes for the next couple of months.  You can still contact me if you have any questions, but I wanted you to meet Mr. Peterson because he has been doing a great job for RRHS engineering.

Week of Feb 11

We are continuing the structural analysis with beam calculations and, ultimately, selecting the beams to be used in a given design.

This is the last week of the six weeks, so make sure that you are up to date on all of your assignments.  To help with that, Wednesday will be a WOW day.  Make sure to get a WOW pass from any of your teachers for whom you need to make up or redo work.  There is no late start on Thursday, however.

Since this is the last week of the six weeks, I will do a journal check this week. Make sure that your journals are up to date and left in the room so that I can access them for grading.

Don't forget that next Monday (Feb 18) is a student holiday.  I hope that you enjoy your 3 day weekend.

3d Printing Challenge Update
The IMAPS conference for this month has been postponed, so the time pressure is off.  However, we are going to continue the challenge. If you are interested and have not signed up yet, there is still time.  Go to this link and give me contact information so that I can let you know when information comes out.  We will assemble a kit of parts that you can use and give to each team that will include an LED light, watch battery and battery holder, and some amount of ink.  Each team will experiment with the ink and the printer to vet out various approaches and then select the one that they feel has the best chance of success.  Then, you will design with that approach in mind, evaluate and even redesign. Remember that your design not working doesn't mean the project didn't succeed.  We are exploring territory here that hasn't been developed yet, so knowing the pitfalls and problems is in itself a success.  Check out the history of the rocket industry.  Today, we send humans and equipment in to space with regularity, but the industry spent years and years in "failure" as rocket after rocket exploded or rose a few feet in the air and then sank back and crashed back in to the ground.  After each failed attempt, the teams analyzed what went wrong and solved the problems - one at a time - to create the scientific and engineering success that we all know today.

We will start meeting weekly with the Novacentrix engineers and possibly others to exchange knowledge.  They will be able to share with us their knowledge of the conductive ink, and we will share with them our findings about how it interacts with the 3d printing materials and process.

Week of Feb 4

This week, we will finish up the load chasing lesson from last Thursday and then move in to beam design.  Since this comes from the civil engineering side of the class, it is rather calculation intensive.

Paying for college is expensive.  RRHS' PTSA is hosting an information session to help you (and/or your parents) pay for college without going broke.  Check out the link or visit the PTSA home page for more information.

This week has both WOW on Wednesday and Late Start on Thursday.  

Last desperate plea for Semi High Tech U.  This is an incredible opportunity for our you to explore the life of an engineer in a high-tech company and get good advice about how to best prepare yourself for a technical career.  The deadline for applications is this Wednesday  I will be glad to answer any questions or help you in any way that I can because I know you would enjoy the experience as well as learn from it.

Week of January 21

I hope that you had a restful long weekend.  We will go over commercial roof systems on Wednesday and then commercial framing on Friday.  Both of these will look like what we covered in the residential unit, but there are some key differences in larger structures. 

 I will also do a journal check this week.  Make sure that you have all of the information that has been given to you; table of contents are up to date; and that each page has a signature, date and number.

Happy New Year

Welcome back.  I hope that you had a great break and are looking forward to a fantastic spring semester in CEA.  The year is going by very fast, so getting in everything that we need to get done and all of the fun extra things will be a challenge.  Right from the start, we have a busy month with activities outside the class on top of continuing to learn about the digital electroincs.

In the class, we will pick back up start by finishing the residential design unit.  We will calculate storm water runoff and then design the sewer connections for our H4H house.  The next unit goes in to commercial construction.  We will design a remodel of an empty warehouse to make it a library.

If you are interested in architecture, you might be interested in the Texas A&M Architecture camp this summer. Texas A&M College of Architecture is hosting Camp ARCH from July 7th-12th. This is a resident summer camp designed to give young people an opportunity to experience the professions of Architect, Construction, Landscape Architect and Visual Designer.  Space is limited to 60 students and selected on a competitive basis.

Applications and additional information can be found on their web site.  The deadline for applications is April 1, 2013 and the cost is $700, with some scholarships for financial assistance offered.

Extra-Curricular Projects

Be thinking about teams that you would like to form to participate in the  IMAPS Digital Printed Circuit Structures workshop on Feb 21-22.  I will explain in class and provide a link with more details, but a team of 4-6 students from RRHS will have a chance to present at this professional workshop, attended and created by professional engineers and engineering faculty members from some of the same colleges to which you may be soon applying.  The conference is being held in El Paso, but the team with the best design will have an opportunity to present your project via Skype to an audience of professionals!  It should be a lot of fun and a great addition to your college applications not to mention the direct exposure that it will give you before faculty members.

Students can participate in the Stratasys Extreme Redesign 3d Printing Challenge.  The challenge is fairly open, but you will select an item that you are familiar with and improve it through redesign.  We will cover this in a later unit.  Contest entries are due February 6.  The linked web site includes contest rules and the application instructions.  You will need to submit an STL file for the 3d printer, and I can help you create that.  Winning entries in each category (and there are three) will be awarded $2500!

Don't forget about the chance to apply for the SEMI High Tech U, which will be Feb 20, 21, & 22.  It is a very fun and very educational 3 day field trip.  Of course,  you would be responsible for the school work for those days that you miss.  However, RRHS students have a chance to apply before applications are opened to students at other schools.  That was supposed to happen January 1, but I imagine that you can still get in early before too many others apply.   Dowlonad and submit your application RIGHT AWAY!

Finally, we have been invited to display and help with the Great Oaks Elementary Science Fair on January 31.  I would like for us to display some of our projects to show how exciting engineering is at high school.  We also want 3-4 students to attend and talk with these youngsters about the opportunities available to them.  Getting students interested in science and engineering early is one key to growing a strong program at our level.