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Final work - Meetings and progress
Final work - Meetings and progress
During this week we kept discussing about the problem and learning more about radiation issues. One of the things we learnt was that countries and cities that are close to the equatorial line tend to have high UV indexes.
Within Peru, Arequipa is not the only city that suffers from this problem. Other cities are (which most are, coincidentally, on northern Peru, closer to the Equator):
Cusco
Tumbes
Trujillo
Iquitos
Lambayeque
Piura
We also learnt which countries are more affected by looking at the amount of melanoma cases attributed directly to sunlight and UV radiation exposure.
According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, over 96% of Australia and New Zealand's melanoma cases are because of UV radiation exposure, followed by Norway, Switzerland and Sweden with 92.6%, 92.0% and 91.7% respectively.
The world average is situated at 75.7%, and the numbers at Peru are (allegedly) only 25%.
This is clearly a problem that affects the whole world and not just our local community, which motivates us even more to try and find a solution.
Skin tone is also important, as people with lighter skin tones are more prone to getting cancer, as described by the Fitzpatrick scale. This scale tries to categorize skin color within 6 categories, I being the lightest tone and VI being the darkest one. Values on the lower-end of the scale (I, II, III) tend to burn rather than tan and are more cancer prone, while those on the higher-end tend to tan rather than burn and have less chances of getting skin cancer.
Whichever solution we propose, it should probably be focused for those on the I, II or III parts of the Fitzpatrick scale.
UV index tries to measure UV radiation present in a certain city, in an attempt to protect people from sun radiation and cancer exposure.
Values between 0 and 2 are considered low.
Values between 3 and 5 are considered "Moderate".
Values between 6 and 7 are considered "High".
Values between 8 and 10 are considered "Very High".
Anything over 11 is considered extreme and any kind of sun exposure should be evaded.
As a thumb rule, between 0 and 2 is safe to be outside. Between 3 to 7 you should have sunscreen on, a hat and a shirt, and anything above 8 should make you seek shade, and the use of sunscreens, hat and shirts are a must.
The recommended protection also varies according to where you are at on the Fitzpatrick scale.
The times where you have the most UV radiation are between 10 am and 4 pm on any given day.
Lots of websites can offer information regarding UV indexes forecast on your city. On the right we see weatheronline.co.uk and below we see uxindex.app
We, as a team, have agreed to start surveying people this week to get more insights into what people think about this problem and how badly (if any) do they want a solution for it.
We are more than motivated to try and help people, as we feel this problem affects a lot of people in our community, and there is probably a lot of people that don't even know how big of a deal this is!
Laboratory - Laser Cutter
Laboratory - Laser Cutter
Monday and Thursday at the laboratory classes we as a team had the opportunity to see the use of a laser cutter, and we also got the chance to be able to make different cuts. To be able to do this, we made simple designs using the software Rhinoceros.
On Monday we mainly focused our attention and resources into learning about the machine and making a very simple design to try and engrave it and cut it with the machine.
Main takeaways are:
When doing your design in Rhino, make sure the following colors are used for the layers:
Red with a thin line to indicate where the cut is going to be made.
Black for engravings.
White as a reference (in our case we used a 700x400mm white rectangle, as that is the canvas size).
DO NOT look into de laser cutter when it is making the cut, as it will damage your eyes.
ALWAYS make sure you are making your design on the superior view. We made ours on the frontal one and couldn't "print" it because of that, although we later found out it can be configured.
Make sure the machine is clean and free of any kind of debris before using it.
On thursday we went with the mindset of trying to make some keyrings, so we made a couple of modifications to our design:
We added a small circle on the left side, a hole where the keyring would go at.
We changed the team name by our names.
We added all five of our names into a single canvas.
Then, teacher Richard taught us how we could very easily add custom engravings thanks to .eps files, as shown in the image to the left.
We then added a custom design to each name, according to our own personal preferences.
With around 20-25 minutes to go, our laptop suddenly shut down. We thought we lost everything, but with around 5 minutes left of class, it revived and we could send our designs to the laser cutter. Shoutout to teacher Richard who did his best those 20 minutes to help us! :D
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