Famous Last Words: The Busiest Week of My Semester (so far...)

This week was quite a crazy one. I was on campus from 8 AM to 12 AM almost every single day. Even on Friday, I was on campus from 8 AM to 9 PM but went straight from campus to hanging out with friends which was fun. I slept for an average of 5 hours each night. It was just an unfortunate week where I had all sorts of homework due at the same time. And last weekend, my family was visiting from Iowa to watch the OU versus Iowa State football game (which almost came back to haunt me when we thought they were going to win) so I was not able to get to any of my homework completed during the weekend leading up to last week.

In my Dynamics of Structures class, we had homework where we were finding the natural frequencies of structures. Basically, everything has a frequency that it likes to vibrate at. But it gets more complicated. Technically, everything has an infinite number of natural frequencies and the vibration is best modeled using a Fourier Series. But the natural frequencies get harder and harder to hit. We're talking in excess of 100 radians per second after the 3rd, 4th, or 5th term of the Fourier Series (that's an excess of 900 rpm). The only way to excite the structure would be to use a motor. But each mode (I'll loosely define mode as the deformation shape associated with a natural frequency) gets less and less crucial to the structure's governing natural frequency. To make this more complicated, every beam is technically an infinite number of small beams. Anyways, I had to model this for my homework using MATLAB, stiffness methods for structural analysis, principles of dynamics, and linear algebra to complete my homework and it took upwards of 12 hours for 5 questions.

This image is a sample from my MATLAB code for the homework. Here, at the top I am showing the mode matrix, [Phi].
Then, the diagram plots out the rough shape of the beam's bending. However, the beam would be curved, not linear as shown. For the homework, we only had to analyze 6 modes because it'd be so much work to model many more modes.

However, I did finish all of my homework for this class which felt great. I really want to finish this class up in 14 weeks like the schedule plans for us, and I didn't want to delay my progress by missing assignments. This week I watched the Epified videos about Krishna. I found the videos to be really entertaining. They packed so much information into a 2-3 minutes video. I was amazed. I learned a lot and learning more about Krishna makes me understand much more why Yudhishthira chose Krishna to be on his side instead of Krishna's army. Then, writing my story, I had to recall all sorts of events that happened and it really engrained the story of Krishna into my brain.

I am excited for the final week of this class. I get one last week to learn about Indian mythology and I'm going to do my best to learn as much as possible! I'm also excited to see what my project turns out to be in the end!

Famous Last Words: A Very Busy Week

This week was extremely hectic. Between having multiple assignments due, deadlines for submitting PMAP (Project Management Advisory Panel) documents for Concrete Canoe, a budget interview with the Gallogly College of Engineering, concrete research for Concrete Canoe, and grading homework (I am a TA in a Structural Analysis class), I was unable to balance everything I needed to finish this past week unfortunately.

However, I really enjoyed the readings in Indian Epics this week. I read two comics - "Kubera: The Lord of Wealth" and "Heroes of Hampi: The Mythology of Kishkindha". The Kubera comic is going to help me a ton with my storybook as I am focusing on Lanka and Vishvakarma in my storybook. The Heroes of Hampi comic was very interesting and I ended up learning a lot about geography in India, and actually learned a little to help with my storybook in the Hampi comic as well.

My best writing in the past week was definitely an appeal with PMAP for revising a rule that they have instituted that hinders research, and I am excited to get to meet with PMAP tomorrow to further discuss this rule. They have been understanding and willing to work with engineering competition teams and I think they'll do what's best for the teams. However, this writing was not creative, and I am finding that I struggle to switch between technical writing and creative writing.

I read a story in this class this week that told a story using a diary to convey emotions. I had not considered writing a diary entry in the past, but the story was great and I am now considering writing a diary entry story in the future.

Unfortunately, I did not make it to writing a Week 5 story for this week. I got to it late Thursday night, and I was not able to think of a story in time. However, I'm not overly worried because I completed the readings and an extra credit assignment, so I should be fine. I am appreciative of the flexibility and extra credit in this class - it allows me to maximize my learning on my busy schedule.

Last year's concrete canoe - image taken by me