Principles of Engineering

Ram Pillai - POE 4A - Liberty High School

Create an electronic poster on your chosen field of Engineering. Include information about what an Engineer might do on a typical day, what is the typical starting salary for that field, what education is needed to find a job, and why might you be interested in pursuing a career in that Engineering field. 

What I learned: I had no idea what an aerospace engineer or any engineer, was paid so this was new information for me. I also learned to check if the information I'm using is accurate by cross-checking with other sources. The biggest surprise to me was that you don't necessarily need an aerospace engineering degree to work in aerospace, just any engineering degree that can relate to aerospace (mechanical, electrical).

What I need to work on: I need to remember to conclude my work properly and further explain what the things I mention are. I also probably should make sure my grammar is perfect across the project.

Ram Pillai - POE 4A -  Liberty High School

Assignment: Conduct a personal interview with a professional in the field of engineering, engineering technology, or another high-tech, high-demand field.

Ram Pillai, Pujan Shah - POE 4A - Liberty High School

Assignment: This activity will provide you with an introduction to voltage, current, resistance, series circuits, parallel circuits, and Ohm’s Law. Your team will construct circuits using various electronic components. You will use a digital multimeter to measure properties within the circuit.

We had to create a series and parallel circuit in Tinkercad first, then we recreated this on a real breadboard to see if our lights would turn on. This assignment taught me how to use a breadboard and furthered my understanding of how circuits work. In the future, I would like to work on more challenging breadboards and maybe use them in more ways than just turning on lights.

Ram Pillai, Pujan Shah, Diya Sangal - POE 4A - Liberty High School

Assignment - In this activity, your team will power a small vehicle using different power sources: a solar panel, a fuel cell, and a battery. You will use the electricity from the solar module to separate hydrogen from oxygen, harness the hydrogen, and then use the hydrogen as fuel.

For this assignment, we had to follow instructions on how to assemble a hydrogen-powered miniature car. We used our VEX knowledge from our compound machines project to assemble the car, then used a breadboard to connect the fuel cell to the motor and power the car. This project taught me a lot about hydrogen fuel cells, and now I am interested in the future of hydrogen-powered cars. Next time, I would like to manipulate variables, like the size of the wheels and the fuel cell, to try to improve our distance travelled.

Ram Pillai, Brett Darien, Sami Khan - POE 4A - Liberty High School

Assignment - Your team will design a renewable composite insulation material following certain constraints.

The goal of this assignment was to construct an 8x8x1 panel for insulation made out of household renewable materials. We then tested this panel to how much heat it insulated when covering a lightbulb in a box. We also had to find how much the panel and each of its materials would cost and the energy lost and gained in joules.  

Ram Pillai - POE 4A - Liberty High School

Project Objective - Construct a truss made out of wooden sticks based off one of two truss designs. Test this truss' load bearing ability by applying a force of 17lbs to it and see how long it lasts and where the breaking point is. 

Learning Target - Understand how forces work on trusses and the distribution of them. Learn how to construct a truss from wooden sticks.

Personal Reflection - I enjoyed this project a lot as it tested my construction skills and my abilities to work with my hands to create the trusses. The calculating forces part of the trusses wasn't so fun, but it was offset by the enjoyment of seeing how long everyone's trusses lasted. My truss, despite not seeming very good, actually lasted for a good amount of time, which made me very satisfied. I learnt a lot about truss forces with this project and about constructing things, which was interesting and helpful for future reference. I think my biggest shortcomings in this project were my mistakes when I calculated the truss forces and when I was constructing the truss. This is because I took more time than the rest of my peers to construct it as my cutting was incorrect a few times, and my construction wasn't perfect, which led to my truss performing worse than it could have been. 

Ram Pillai - POE 4A - Liberty High School

Ram Pillai - POE 4A - Liberty High School

Ram Pillai - POE 4A - Liberty High School