Hello SEED!

Hello (blog) world!

I’m Arisa, and I am one of the eleven SEED interns for Summer 2018! I’m very excited to be a part of this internship and to learn more about engineering design. I took ENGI 120 (Freshman Design) last fall, and one of my favorite parts of the design process was thinking through different solutions and picking the best one to then build. That’s one of the things I am looking forward to the most this summer, and I can’t wait to see what we end up designing!

Another part of the internship that has been exciting is getting to know the three students from Brazil. The week has included lots of learning, not only for them but also for us. We love learning more about their culture and their university. One of the more formal ways we did this was through our cultural presentations. In these group presentations, we discussed certain aspects of culture and compared Brazil to the United States. I loved learning about Brazilian culture (especially about the food!) and culture at the student’s university. While there were differences between the two places, I found the similarities were even more interesting and got us all closer.

A slide from our presentation looking at American, Houstonian, and Brazilian art

As far as the actual engineering design portion of this week, we have already hit the ground running. For the first week or so of the program we will be learning about the design process through a mini project, building an enrichment device for the tapirs at the Houston Zoo. You might be asking: what are tapirs and what is an enrichment device? I asked the same exact question when we got our project description. But through research and visiting the zoo, I’ve learned lots about them. They look sort of like hogs with really long noses, and they weigh between 300 and 700 lbs. There are two tapirs we will be building for at the zoo and their names are Moli and Noah. The zoo has tasked us with building a device to mentally stimulate the tapirs, which we have already started brainstorming for! The mini project will be a good way for me to refresh my memory of the design process before we begin our long term projects.

Moli and Noah

 

Our brainstormed ideas for the device

So far, it has been an exciting week filled with getting to know everyone, two  hot trips to the zoo, and beginning our mini project design. I am excited to see what next week will bring as we wrap up our mini projects and begin our major ones!

 

 

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