Measurement Presentations

For the presentations, we had to explain measurement in a fun way. My group decided to do a short film called "Measurement Man: The Movie". It was fun working in my group with Katie, Sachi, Diana, Meera, and Sonia, as we created this funny and creative little film to explain measurement. We didn't have a checklist or anything as we were making the film and we realized that we left out a good number of things in our film.

As for the other teams, it turned out that everyone did presentations. Some were very colorful and fun and used great examples that were actually very funny. But a majority of the presentations were quite bland and I easily lost attention. 2 groups brought up the dimensional analysis song from middle school... THAT IS NOT OKAY... 

Overall, I also feel as if a majority of groups rushed through their presentations and this project was more of a review of the things rather than actually teaching it considering the school system has been instilling it to us since we were really young. It was really easy to lose attention when watching this presentations.

Color Theory

Monochromatic colors: All the colors of a specific hue.

Analogous colors: groups of colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel, with one being the dominant color, which tends to be a primary or secondary color, and two on either side complementing, which tend to be tertiary.

Complementary colors: colors directly opposite each other in the color spectrum, such as red and green or blue and orange, that when combined in the right proportions, produce white light.

Color triads: colors that are evenly spaced around the color wheel.

Split complementary: a variation of the complementary color scheme. In addition to the base color, it uses the two colors adjacent to its complement.

The Kaleidoscope project

In class we created kaleidoscopes with colored pieces of plastic cut up and put between two clear sheets of plastic. Inside the tube, we lined each side with mirrors to get the above result.

The textbook app

 As students, we have to carry textbooks around campus all day, every day and sometimes, we have to carry our books to and from school as well. All of these textbooks along with our binders and notebooks and other supplies, add up to a lot in our backpacks. Textbooks are normally 3 pounds on average. It may not seem like a lot, but when you have to carry multiple textbooks along with everything else in your backpack, it makes a difference.
Let's also talk about the quality of the textbooks we get from our schools. When these textbooks have been used for the past 10 years or so, they start to fall apart. It's really annoying when you're carrying all of your books in your arms and pages fall out or when you're trying to do your homework you don't have all of the pages to complete your assignments. And because the textbooks have to go back to the school, we can't make any marks in the book. Students that ignore this rule leave someone else with a textbook that has marks in it that could distract the next student to receive the book.
Then we also have to consider the price of textbooks in collage. Every year, college students spend around $1000-$3000 on textbooks every year. If they buy used books, they already have notes and scribbles written all over the page.
We've all tried using the online textbooks. You have to go to the website, put in your state, find your grade level, find your subject, and then find your book. Half the books we need aren't even on these online websites. It's a long process to get to your book and you can't find every book your need. Some of these aren't compatible with some devices, the pages are too messy, and you can't make any notes on the pages.
As students we have to deal with these expensive, inconvenient, heavy, bulky textbooks and annoying online textbooks.
But now we can say good bye to those.
With the textbook app, it is much cheaper to obtain every book you need on any device. Since the textbook companies aren't spending all this money on printing pages and such, they can sell it on this app at a much cheaper price or for entirely free. You can make neat marks on the pages that can be easily removed and you can click on little note bubbles that can enlarge to show the side notes you left for yourself and collapse when you are done reading them. No more messy, heavy, bulky, books that are falling apart with the tiniest touch. Every book you need will be on your one device. That's 12 pounds of books put into 1 to 2 pounds of tablet or laptop. You'll never lose or rip a page, you'll never have difficulty finding a place for all those books, and you never have to worry about your book falling apart, everything will be there, safe and sound, on your device.
These tools for education shouldn't be such an expensive hassle. With this app, it'll be easier and cheaper to have every textbook we need for school.

3 Problems

Three problems I would like to address would be:
1. Bringing more jobs to/back to America
2. The drought that California is currently facing
3. And the increasing cost of living

America is currently at an unemployment rate of around 8%. There are a few things we could do to fix this problem. First off is that, many jobs/companies/factories that were once based in America have all been moved to foriegn countries. Bringing these back to America would definitely increase the amount of jobs we have in America which in turn would lower our unemployment rate. Almost everything we see is made in China, or some other foreign country. bringing these jobs back would provide millions of jobs for people. The reasons jobs leave the United States is due to free trade agreements between nations that provide tax exemptions for inventory(parts) and finished goods(products). Therefore, nations that will provide these services with lower taxation give corperations the advantage of selling cheaper products. So, if the United States government did not impose these taxes and additional regulations upon American companies, we would be able to compete at home. A second thing that can be done is reducing regulations on buisnesses. Because of all the complicated regulations that are placed on buisnesses, buisnesses move their companies to foreign countries so that they don't have to put up with all of the regulations placed on them. This causes the rise in unemployment. By reducing the regulations, buisnesses won't feel the need to have to move everything to a foreign country and bring jobs back to America. Because regulatory agencies report to the executive branch of the government, there is no legislative oversight and no judicial oversight. Therefore, they can write any rule or regulation that will fulfill their existence. The only way to reduce their impact on buisness and jobs would be for congress, who owns the checkbook, to reduce the funding to these 150 regulatory agencies. Lastly, we could reduce the taxes placed on buisnesses. Due to all the taxes placed on buisnesses, buisnesses are forced to raised the price of their products. This causes the consumers to have to pay more for the product. When products are expensive, people don't want to buy. Less buying means less need for workers which then means less jobs. By lowering the taxes, it lowers the price of the products, which leads to more buying, which then opens up more jobs.

Another problem, that especially California is facing, is the drought. Currently, the dams for our reserviors are only enough to support 17 million people. California currently has a population of 36 million people. If we built additional dams to catch the snow melt, which is where our water comes from, we'd have more reserviors of water to use. Its not an immediate solution, but it does prevent something like this from happening in the future. A more immediate thing to do would be to have a system of some sort that took our waste water from the bathtubs, sinks, and washing machines to be used to water our grass and plants. Also, all sprinkler/watering systems should be scheduled to water at night where there's no hot sun to make the water evaporate into the air instead of watering our plants.

The last problem to address would be the rising cost of living, just by looking at your grocery list six years ago to now you can see the difference. Quantitative easing is the process of the federal reserve, a bank, not owned by the federal government at all, printing money that has no backing to a gold standard and distributing it into the economy, which drives the value of the dollar down with respect to foreign currencies, which in turn drives the cost of our products up. Because of value of the dollar going down, this effects the cost  of living to average citizens as well as our unemployment rate, but this especially hurts the poor. Additionally, with the rising cost of energy, which is effected by the federal and state governments imposing additional fees for power companies to generate power based on CO2 emissions cap and trade regulations. Cap and trade is a function of government, such as the EPA or CARB (California Air Resource Board) charging power companies additional fees which they have to pass on to their consumers for the amount of CO2 they produce to create energy/electricity which boils down to a hidden tax on everyone's power bill. This drives the cost of energy up for all consumers and especially hurts the poor because they can't afford to pay that tax. As well as oil drilling restrictions and pipeline building restrictions to bring afforable oil from Canada to the United States for refining. Point in fact the Keystone pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico would reduce the price of oil and provide an estimated 30 million jobs to Americans. When there are 60 thousand miles of oil pipelines already in the United States, why is one new safe pipe line an issue? Bottom line is, that driving the cost up to reduce economic impact has a very severe impact on the poor, who cannot afford it.

Lines

For this assignment, I picked my pocket watch I bought in New Mexico. I love pocket watches and doodling tiny little curly designs and flowers so drawing this pocket watch was perfectly my style. The watch spoke to me when I had to pick something to draw. It was a reminder of the fun summer I had visiting family and various other fun places on a roadtrip into the southwest. It may not be working anymore but it is still special to me and worthy of being drawn.

Self portrait

For this project, we had to choose something that symbolized us. For me, it would be all of my art supplies of which I use to create the artwork that I am quite proud of. Of course, when you see this mess of tools and supplies, there isn't anything that seems special enough to catch your eye and make you really think about it. But to me, these tools are quite beautiful things. When these things are used and put together, they create something that portrays the heart, soul, and imagination the artist contains. Much like a cake or a group of odd friends, when put together just right you can come up with something amazing.

In this class, my goals are to be able to put my ideas and artistic skills towards technology and creating something everyone would enjoy or find useful. I would like to learn how to take my ideas and learn how I can make them real and useful.

Product Improvement

 

Product Improvement

In this product, I worked with Meera and Sachi to improve the Styrofoam cup. To start off, we brainstormed the things that we didn't like about it, it's flimsiness, how it is non reusable, it's only one size, there's no insulation, and there is no lid. To fix these problems we made the following additions:

• the material to build it will be a reusable plastic that can insulate
• an accordion type design for the center to make the cup compact able
• and a lid that can be used as a coaster
• In addition we thought of a straw that wouldn't melt under hot liquids

Of course every design did have a few problems and improvements to be made. In the lid we had to add a hole for the straw in the lid. But what if we didn't want the straw in the lid? How would we keep the liquid from spilling out of the hole? To fix that, we added a tab thing to cover the hole. Next, problem was how we were going to keep the cup together when we compacted it. Between the two bases, we added the idea of having something in the bases that would allow them to hook onto each other when we twisted the bases. Finally, there was the holding the cup comfortably. We added a handle that would allow the person to hold their cup comfortably.

Grand Canyon Project

9-8-14
1.) Why do you think brainstorming was helpful when solving a problem?

Brainstorming was helpful because everyone could get their ideas out on the table to work off of and revisit as we design our structure. Not ever idea was useless as someone had a new idea because an old idea could be applied to the new idea.

2.)How did testing improve your design?

Testing improves your design in a way that helps you figure out what works and what doesn't. Testing it before presenting the final product helps make the structure stable and fit all the criteria it should fit.

3.)What are some important characteristics of a successful team?

To have a successful team, each individual must be willing to work hard and work well with others. One team member with negative attitude and no collaboration will make the team unstable as they try to work. Every idea and helping hand counts.

4.) What could you do differently?

If I could do something differently with the bridge, I would be more precise about the button design and the length of the slits we slipped the "buttons" through. I would have also cut the two pages in half so I could make a longer tunnel for the "people" blocks to travel through.