Design References

The following list is a list of things that I have read, watched, or simply been inspired by in my designs.

1. Encyclopedia of Modern Warplanes – Bill Gunston – This is a book filled with hundreds of warplanes used all over the globe. I received this book as a little kid sometime between the ages of 7 or 9. I spent countless hours with my nose buried in this book, analyzing each and every aircraft in this. I loved looking up and memorizing the facts on each aircraft, from the Mach number to the weapons payload of each aircraft. This book was a huge inspiration for me as it fueled the fire inside of me to pursue something with airplanes as I grew older. This book helped me through my 8th grade science project of designing an airplane with interchangeable wings. To help design my wings, I took the average data of different wing shapes and scaled this down to a size where I could create them out of balsa wood. I still enjoy looking through this book to help inspire me.

1. Lego Building Blocks – Ever since I could remember, I had Legos. It started off with the larger Legos that little budding engineering Mike couldn't fit into his mouth in a fierce attempt to eat anything and everything. Eventually it moved to the smaller legos, which opened up a world of fun in basic designs that I could create. Legos give a young child the ability to explicitly model their creativity with a resolution of small plastic pieces. Later on in Engineering school, you will learn how to design things on the computer with even greater resolution in programs such as ProEngineer and AutoDesk Inventor. As a small child, and being inspired by aircraft, I was able to model what I thought were good designs using Legos. I would spend hours creating airplanes, based off the Encyclopedia of Modern Warplanes aircraft. Playing with Legos would be one of my favorite weekend things to do from the ages 5-21, something that never gets old.

1. Physics of the Impossible -Michio Kaku. I first read this book in the summer of 2010 as I found it on the clearance rack in Barnes and Noble. In this book, Michio Kaku describes different ideas and their feasibility according to the known laws of physics. These ideas range from lightsabers and force fields to worm holes and time travel and ranks them on different levels of impossibility. This book puts complex physics into a readable and understandable format, which helps inspire me to think that anything is possible. This helps one thing divergently, and not get too caught up the limiting factors that others have put on their designs. This book is definitely a great read.

1. Popular Science – I have had a subscription to Popular Science since I was in 7^th grade. I still remember where I was when I picked up my first Popular Science magazine, and what the main article was. It was the July 1999 issue, and I was at a Chinese food restaurant with my father and brother. The article was "Fast, Agile, Stealthy, Super Carriers" and the front cover was a futuristic computer drawing of this fighter/bomber aircraft. I asked the restaurant if I could take the magazine home, and I was allowed to. Soon after, my parents got me a subscription for Christmas, and I have kept every single issue since. Once a month I'll get it in the mail and read it from cover to cover, the information in this magazine is something that I look to, to keep up to date on what is happening currently in the STEM fields, as well as what could possibly happen. Some of my favorite issues are the ones that are the “top 100 Innovations of the year”. Many of the designs and innovations that are written about in this article are inspiring to me to help me think of additional things the world needs, or even problems to attempt to attack. This magazine has also lead me to subscribe to other similar science magazines such as: Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, and Discover. These are all also very great magazines that keep me up to date and inspired.

1. Seven Habits for Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey. I was recommended this book when I was in 9th grade by a leader of a youth group that I was in. In it are quite literally 7 laid out habits that people should follow to get things done well and timely. I found that this would help me later on be a better person and student, the later helping out in attempting to create effective designs.

1. Star Wars – George Lucas. A long time ago... In a Galaxy far far away... These are words that are music to my ears. Star Wars is very inspiring to me from a design perspective. This series, both the movies and the books, were able to capture my imagination as a kid. I was especially inspired by the books in this series, as there are hundreds of novels written based of the original series. There is nothing like getting lost in a great book, where a general or vague description of the technology can captivate your mind to create (be innovative) and visualize these technologies in your brain.

• 1. TED: http://www.ted.com/ - TED, founded in 1984, stands for “Technology, Entertainment and Design”. This is a small non profit group which is devoted to "Ideas worth Spreading". This website is the YouTube for inspirational videos in either technology and design. People that put up videos to this website are people that are extremely involved and passionate about little certain things in their respective fields. These little certain things range from solving world hunger, to sustainable design. There are hundreds of videos, averaging 10-30 minutes in length that one can watch to learn about what is going on in that particular field. It is very inspiring to look

1. The Way Things Work – David Macaulay. I first picked up this book in middle school as it was on display in our library. I check this book out so many times that I ended up just buying the book. In this book, David Macaulay describes the basic functions of mechanical items that small children might be curious about. This book helped fuel my curiousity even further and start asking the question, "How does this work" more and more often. This can be a dangerous question for a little kid to ask, especially if he is ambitious enough to begin to take things apart. My future endeavors of reverse engineering caused my parents loads of headaches, as much of the stuff I took apart to ask the how does it work question might not have all come back together in working form.