February 22, 2010

Woopie

You know a meeting is getting somewhere when someone clearly and unabashedly states that “we need woopie.”


For those of you who aren’t familiar with the intricacies of the CMSS lexicon, “woopie” is a metal cylinder that sits on top of the drive shaft. Designed by alum Will Wedler in the spring of 2007, it was lovingly dubbed “woopie,” a name that has stuck for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, that piece was custom-made for the old shaft and we will have to make a new one because, well, it’s hard to find a piece that fits.


With Spring Break just around the corner, we are working hard to make some progress before we become distracted by warmer weather and that pungent smell of manure around campus. After ordering and receiving some important parts, we are ready to start designing the layout of the charge controller printed circuit board. We were able to get a student rate for printing at Advanced Circuits, so once the board is designed we should be set to print it. Still no response from the cell company, Sineva, but even with that setback we are on schedule for the panels. We will certainly have them for competition, if not lake testing


Looking ahead, we are preparing for a pool test, which will occur immediately after Spring Break. This pool test is crucial in that it allows us to calibrate our sensors, which will provide us with valuable race day stats come competition. Unfortunately, we were unable to calibrate our sensors last year, so the information we gathered from competition was virtually meaningless. This will be a good change going into this year’s competition.


Also, look for us at the 2010 SciTech festival at the Carnegie Science Center! We will be presenting on our various projects on Friday and Saturday, March 9th and 10th. We will keep you updated.

February 1, 2010

A ReCap in Pictures!

Apologies for the brief hiatus! For those of you who missed Activities Fair and our Meet and Greet: check out the pictures below, feel a little sad about all the fun you missed, and contact us for ways to get involved.

"Pretend like you're friends!"

Showing me all of the people who signed up -- a grand total of 15?

Activities Fair can be a good place to pick up a lot of useless SWAG. And he didn't even sign up for the club...

One of these doesn't belong.

"Zoiks! Isn't Solar Splash fun, guys!"

The thinkers...

...and the doers.


Check out our website (link to the right) to learn more about how you can become part of CMSS.

Also, a quick thank you to the people who have been leaving comments! For those of you who have used the information here towards your own projects, we would love to hear about what you are working on. We're glad this blog could help you out.

Stay tuned for more updates.