bridge building contest at ND

The physics students in grades 11 and 12 at Notre Dame Regional Secondary School hold an annual bridge building contes. This year it will be held this tuesday May the 6th 2008 and the information about this contest is on balsabridge.Here they measure if the bridge that was made by the students can withstand the amount of pressure and stress bestowed upon it. On the balsa bridge site one can also find additional links that are related to bridges, here is one of them "Balsa Wood". Pictures on last years contest are found here. The contests' sponsors are are a huge part of the contest, because without them this experience would not be as great of would not even happen at all. The list of all the sponsors of this contest can be identified on this site. A major sponsor is the "Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia"






Vancouver is a city of many interesting bridges, my favorite bridge is the "Burrard Street Bridge of Vancouver"














The winner of the contest in 2000 and who still has the highest record held at 209.4 kg is "Matthew Sullivan"

Here is a closer look at his bridge.(below)









This photo is of last years contest shows the result of a bridge that could not handle the amount of pressure it had to withstand in holding up the weights.

Easter Egg : Multi-form project

I placed multiple forms together, and added an easter egg. I designed my multi-form project with the theme of the "Sphynx (cat)". I added the same icon on all forms, and gave information on the sphynx for my easter egg. I added a splash screen that was timed, a menu containing link to a paint program, clock, and name generator, temperature conversion, finding the sphynx, sphynx racing, calculator programs, and a closing screen. I also added a msg box that would pop up asking if they would really like to exit, and if they typed yes then the closing screen would show. I should've made my design much more extravagant, and my about-form could have included more information. This project was a great experience because I learned how to do new things and what they meant. My easter egg which is a hidden form is located in my paint program. Once in my paint program, one has to click the image of the cat and from there a form will open telling you to click on the sphynx. From there a message box will pop up describing the personality of the sphynx(cat), and at the same time another form will open with pictures of the description.

Computer Disassembly Project

In disassembling a Compaq DeskPro computer that was assigned to each team of two, we learned what basically lurked inside a computer and what made it tick. Not all teams had the same type of structure because we were given a Compaq computer of a Pentium 1, 2, or 3 varieties. Thus we had the opportunity to discover those different designs that made up the computer when we asked our classmates for help. Now to get down to business, in addition to the computer that was assigned to us we were also given a repair kit case. Inside this repair kit case were the tools that allowed us to take apart the computer and a yellow cylinder tube (collector tube) that allowed us to store all the screws we took out. First we disconnected the obvious “Power and Data Connectors”, we then also took out the “Network Card”, “Sound Card”, “Riser Board”, “Hard Drive”, “CD-ROM”, “Floppy Drive”, “Speaker”, RAM: number of “sticks”, “Motherboard”, “Front panel”, “CPU cooling fins”, “CPU”, “Power Supply”, and the “Backup battery”. We took shots of all these parts and then we reassembled the computer back together and tested it to work; and finally in the end it worked with the assistance of our teacher and a classmate to help us close the lid of the computer (front panel) properly.

Article on the OLPC

The link below forwards to an article on the OLPC, from the Wall Street Journal. It talks about some of the concerns about the OLPC and it discusses the aggressive plans by companies that have felt threatened by this technolgy.

Article on the OLPC, from the Wall Street Journal

OLPC XO User Review

Positive aspects to the machine by Kenneth Barrow, but there are also aspects that the he finds frustrating.

OLPC XO User Review by Kenneth Barrow

OLPC "the 100 dollar laptop"

These laptops are only for developing countries, and every aspect of this laptop has limited energy consumption in mind. It also has a built-in wireless networking, and each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbours. OLPC also has basic video conferencing. It has a built-in hand crank generator rated at 1 to 10: one minute of cranking gets 10 minutes of operation. This is great teachnology for developing countries, because each student gets one and takes it home. It is their connection to the communtiy outside theirs, and it is at a wonderful price.

Google Analytics

Today is the 20th of November, and I have been running Google Analytics for quite some time now. Google Analytics tracks down the visitors on my page, like where they are from (referred sites / direct sites), and how long they have stayed. The visitors that have veiwed my page so far are from the Canada, and from this country the visitors come from the cities Vancouver, and New Westminster. 8 visits from Vancouver and 1 visit from New Westminster.