Disasters (avoidance and relief)
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Disaster Avoidance
Don't count on the Emergency Alert System
By: Rita Kepner
I am researching disaster warning and found that the all mandatory EBS has been replaced by the voluntary EAS which is mandatory only for tests and messages from the President of the United States. Here are two recent items to think about.
Reporter Roger Close for the Northwest Hawai'i Times (vol.3 No.11, November 2006) notes that after the recent quake in Hawaii "only one local TV station (KHON) continued on the air ...broadcasting the Seattle Seahawks game...[the EAS warning alert for a possible tsunami] came three hours after the event."
Forecast just before earthquake possible
Italian scientists say the effects of strong earthquakes can be predicted seconds before the destruction occurs. Earthquakes Can Now be Predicted
But if EAS comes three hours later -- will it matter?
Don't assume WSU facilities are clean and ready for your use.
By: Terry Keatts
In the description of our project it said that "WSU has a 65 HP pump that should be adequate for testing". Well, after we were selected for the project we started looking at different washing methods and researching the product that the belt washer would be placed on. During the fourth week of the semester we went to start working with the water jet cutter for the first time. First off we discovered that the pump was a prototype, the second pump that FLOW systems ever build, and while it could provide the pressures that we needed the flow rate was only half of what we were designing for. Also it appeared that the water jet cutter had not been cleaned since it was built and it took us over a week to clean and setup the equipment so that it would be in the proper condition for our testing. Thankfully all we needed to do was clean up the equipment, so we were fortunate, if we would have had to order parts we may have had a extremely long lead time.
Exam Errors
By: Luke Jones
I have always found that when taking exams, it is helpful to be rested, hydrated, etc. In fact, I sometimes think this is as important as studying. However, I am a college athlete, and with 10-13 practices per week, it can be extremely hard to get enough sleep and food to be alert and ready in class.
Probably the most extreme example of this problem happened when I took an exam on a Monday, after returning from a weekend race in California. What with traveling, studying, and the actual competitions, I was pretty exhausted. So when I took my exam it was all I could do not to fall asleep in class. I was supposed to be solving differential equations, and what I was really doing was struggling to keep my eyes open. Obviously, I did not do well.
My homework in the class had been fairly good up to that point, so one bad exam wasn’t too big of a problem in the overall grade, but there are some things I have learned from trying to not repeat that particular instance. First, I could have scheduled the test for an earlier day. Most professors, if given adequate time, are happy to give an exam earlier, and they are generally impressed that students are taking the initiative to schedule it. Second, several days of intensive effort and little sleep is not good preparation for anything. Even a nap here and there can make a huge difference, so rest when you can. And finally, I think it’s better to get my studying done before I leave for races. I always try to take assignments and study materials with me, I always spend lots of time attempting to use them, and it never actually helps very much. I can be way more productive at home, with all my books and computer, than I ever will be in a hotel lobby at midnight trying to take notes on the napkin from my complimentary breakfast. It just isn’t worth the time.
Have you sold your soul to WOW ?
By: Kevin Abbott
Video games today are looked at a relaxing and enjoyable form of entertainment, which give many college students an interactive short-term escape from reality. They become helpful in relieving tension and stress that can be brought on from classes and homework. While most the time this is a good thing, it becomes a problem when these temporary reality escapes become more permanent and video games start to consume the user. In the past year it has become more noticeable to me that one video game in particular has grabbed taken over many students lives in an unhealthy way.
World of Warcraft happens to be the game and the students that play it are giving up more than a couple of dollars a month for the membership, many are giving up their social and academic lives. Since the beginning of the 2005-2006 academic school year I have seen many friends start to play this game and devote many hours a day to it. For this study I will focus on only two that happen to be the longest users and the most addicted. They will remain anonymous and from here on out be referred to as Buddy A and Buddy B.
Buddy A picked up the hobby of playing World of Warcraft in August 2005, since starting the game Buddy A has stopped going to most every class unless absolutely necessary. Aside from the occasional late night movie, short trip to the bathroom, or a quick meal Buddy A never leaves his chair and remains glued to his monitor, residing in the Virtual lands of the World of Warcraft. Despite loss of social connection and the lack of effort put into classes Buddy A still remains in school and passes most all his classes.
Which is more than I can say for Buddy B, which started playing the game around April 2005 and has since sold his soul to Blizzard Game Company. Buddy B also follows the same schedule of rarely leaving his computer chair but to eat, use the bathroom, and at the most go to class 2 hours a week. I have seen Buddy B even less than Buddy A do to the fact that this over powering computer game has added a couple of more semesters on to his college career and I no longer have any classes with this friend. So even though he has managed to remain in college, World of Warcraft and its addictive nature has added more than a couple repeat courses to his college schedule, and also I imagine taken a little toll of his GPA, which could hinder his employability.
The purpose of this case study isn’t to say don’t play video games, it is more a warning to watch out for and avoid life ruining video games such as World of Warcraft. When a game consumes more hours of your life than every other aspect combined it is safe to say you have a problem and the game has become unhealthy upon your life. So if you ever find yourself constantly skipping class or turning down a hot date to go on quests or a raid with a some dwarfs, elves and wizards it is probably time to consider canceling you video game membership and trying to gain you true life back.
Keeping Things Moving
by Ian Reeves
For many engineering students senior design is the first experience they will have in a real world design process. This is a great opportunity, but it can be a little overwhelming for some. I personally have had a lot of real world engineering experience from past jobs and personal hobbies, but even this past experience did not prepare me for the difficulties that we encountered during the design process. We quickly learned that some of the material constraints put on our project were going to make finding components very difficult. Our project was to design a steerable cleaning nozzle to perform a tank cleaning process for the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. This project required that all construction materials be of completely chemically inert materials, mainly stainless steel and Teflon. Due to the nature of the materials inside the tank, we were not allowed to pass any fluid past the tank boundary with the exception of the cleaning fluid. This eliminated the possibility of using hydraulic systems which to this point was the only type of actuator we found that met the other constraints. The entire device was also required to be submersible, and had to withstand a 15psi pressure test while submersed. We quickly discovered that finding components was going to be a very serious difficulty.
As time went on, and we began generating concepts, the actuator problem was still not solved. We spent hours and hours searching online, and contacting parts vendors, but we could not find components that met our needs. Fortunately we did not let this problem keep us from moving on with the design process. We continued to generate concepts even though we had not found parts to use. Our group was one of the last groups to travel and meet our project sponsor. Prior to the trip we had narrowed our design concept to two basic designs, one of which was a pre-manufactured unit that we had stumbled upon during our many internet searches. During this meeting the project sponsor encouraged us to continue with our own design even if we could not find components that met all of the design requirements. The scope of the project was basically reduced from providing a fully functional device, to providing a working model. We later learned that the scope of several projects were changed or reduced later in the semester.
From this experience we learned that it is very important to keep things moving. There will be stumbling blocks along the way but it is very important not to get hung up on them. We also learned that most project sponsors are more than willing to work with you if you are experiencing problems with a specific aspect of the project.
Disaster Relief
Who you gonna call? FACULTY?
By: Christie Larson
To design our flight test system many components needed to be selected for both data and video acquisition. Our group was very excited about getting our project started so we jumped the gun and set out to find the perfect solution. A few days later our efforts came to a screeching halt when we discovered that the equipment alternatives were endless. We really needed to know our stuff about what we wanted and needed. As we researched and researched, and researched some more, we realized that our problem was that we only had a basic knowledge of most of the equipment we needed and what made things even harder was that our sponsors wanted to spend as little money as possible. So how could we find out more about these things without sifting through a whole bunch of ambiguous information on the internet? And even further down the road, how were we going to calibrate the equipment once we did get it? In every one of our labs calibration was already done for us. We had hit a wall and we needed to talk to someone who knew more about this stuff than we did. A thought shot into my head, “What if we ask someone who had instructed us on the equipment we’re looking for?” We also needed to borrow as much equipment from WSU as we could to keep cost down. Another thought, “Who would be nice enough to help us with that?” The answer was clear; we needed to talk to FACULTY!
When I told my team we needed to talk to the faculty I saw some fear and doubt in their eyes, but those feelings were quickly replaced after realizing the resources we had to turn to. A strong network on resources was all it took to get us moving in the right direction. Our first hurdle was choosing a DAQ that fit our needs. We needed a 24 analog channel data logger, but we found that more channels meant higher cost and if we were going to spend over one thousand dollars on one component we wanted to make sure it did what we wanted it to. Also, there were just too many options. To clear up our confusion and narrow the field we turned to Dr. Stock for some help. Dr. Stock teaches ME 305, Thermal Fluids Laboratory, and ME 406, Experimental Design. We walked away from our meeting knowing exactly what we needed and found a DAQ the next day that fit our needs.
In our effort to borrow components from WSU I set out to talk to Robert Lentz. Robert Lentz is the teacher’s assistant for the thermal fluid’s laboratory and installs and calibrates all equipment in the WSU labs. We consider him to be the local expert on equipment, so he was also our resource for calibrating equipment. From the “Lentz Store,” which consists of room upon room of old equipment, we were able to borrow two Setra pressure transducers, one digital magnetic pickup, one Omega pressure transducer, and one strain gage accelerometer. This reduced our cost by over one thousand dollars.
To calibrate all of our equipment we got permission from Dr. Stock and Dr. C. Richards to use the equipment in the 406 laboratory. Robert Lentz told us what equipment to use and we went from there. Lastly, we employed Mike Shook’s help for video components. Mike is the local computer guy and recently installed a video surveillance system in the ME computer labs. He let us borrow a digital camera with software so that we could test the system performance and get a feel for what we could use in our flight system.
A strong network of faculty members enabled us to get help for all of the problems we ran into in the preliminary stages of our project. Knowing the right people saved us a lot of time and energy. We shouldn’t be scared to ask the faculty for help either, after all, it is their job. In my four years at WSU I made an effort to build working relationships with many of the faculty and I found that they were more than willing to help during these 416 struggles. In the end we discovered that talking to the faculty members wasn’t as scary as it seemed.
Engineering Design Crisis
Our story begins one bright and sunny morning in the engineering senior design class, one group was overjoyed with life until the fateful news was heard. A conference call at 9:30am started the fiasco. After weeks of rigorous planning, our group had designed the perfect product. Little to our knowledge, these relentless hours spent slaving over this project would soon mean nothing. Our project manager told us to go to a specific website for similar product parts, and this is when we stumbled upon a design from a typical profit-hungry corporation that was almost exactly like our own. Our jaws dropped at the news. "Son of a *@#$%!" Our design was not unique! "What to do?" At first, with hearts sinking, we felt as though we should scrap the design and start over. "This makes me sick to my stomach!" said our liason, as left the room.
An idea sparked..."why not use this copy of a tool to our advantage? Why not use this to benefit ourselves?" 10 minutes later... "This product costs $5500.00!!!" Within minutes we called the company's toll free number and the following conversation ensued, "Hi, we're building a product that is similar to one of your pipe cutters." "Oh yeah? We worked with the Navy a couple years ago, and they decided to build their own. Cost 'em three times as much by the time they were done, they shoulda just bought one of our tools." "I don't doubt that one bit, we were looking at designing our own, but it looks like you guys have all the details worked out already." The company employee then continued to tell us about the pipe cutter's price, power and so on. Unfortunately, this conversation didn't relieve our tormented hearts. We were still at a loss. Soon though, a decision was made. "We've gotta talk to Dr. Chuck!"
To be continued...