Welcome! Here you will find all my adventures, frustrations and successes this summer as a SEED intern here in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen! Interestingly enough, our first day started by getting to sleep in. We started at 9 am instead of the usual 8. I definitely appreciated the slower start because it let me get to know the other Rice students as well as the students from Brazil. Many of the Rice students already knew each other but I had been in a much smaller class than anyone else so all the faces were new. Fortunately our TA’s, Caz and Sammi, had planned several hours of ice breakers so before long we all knew each others names and were joking around like we had been friends forever. Day one was primarily consumed by fun getting-to-know-you activities that showed us what the summer has in store. We capped the day off with a trip to the zoo that, despite the oppressive Houston summer, was great fun! The group I was with spent a lot of time admiring the elephant enclosures since the elephants were out and active! Day Two had a little more seriousness but still was quite fun. In the morning we did something called a deconstruction lab. “Deconstruction Lab” is basically a fancy term for everybody grab some hand tools and see how badly you can destroy this piece of junk. On the side we got to see how the thing is built but I think we all released our inner anarchist. I was on the group taking apart an old photocopier we stole from the OEDK trash. You would not believe how many screws and weird electronic components are inside of one of those! It was surprisingly satisfying to watch the device slowly but steadily become a skeleton. The other group tackled an old motor of some sort that was all rusted and full of old oil. I definitely knew I had picked the right device when they opened something up and accidentally dumped the entire load of oil on the floor of the design kitchen. Based on the stains they were definitely not the first! In the afternoon we continued to get to know each other by making cultural presentations. My group worked on presenting about the university life in Brazil and the United States. I was amazed at how different it was. Apparently in Brazil it is very uncommon for students to have any “dorm life’ or even dorms at all. Most students have jobs during the day and go to class at night. I am still having trouble imagining the lifestyle because it is just so different from my own. The presentations were fascinating all the way through and I am really looking forward to learning more about the Brazilian culture as this program goes on. At the end of the day we were introduced to a small design project we will do to prepare for our main work. We are building an enrichment device for these giant pig-elephant-hippo things called tapirs for the Houston Zoo.

Day three was when the work kicked in. Tuesday night we had reviewed the design process at hoe and came in ready to get a better understanding of what the zoo needed from us. I am on Team Hippo with Julia, Mathias, and Rebeca and I think we will work well for this. The big activity of the day was interviewing our client at the zoo. We planned questions, took and early lunch, then set out for the zoo around 12. I had heard rumors of how quickly Dr. Wettergreen walked but following him to the zoo was a  good work out for the day! once we were inside we went straight for the tapirs. The two adults were just hanging out in the pool trying to get in a mid afternoon nap. They definitely have cornered the market on ugly-cute. I ended up volunteering to be point on the interview so I spent the next bit trying to familiarize myself with our questions before we met our client. Memory, one of the zookeepers in charge of hoofed-animals met us there. What ensued was a bit of a mad dash to get in all the questions while also taking in all the information she was giving freely. She led us out of the main zoo into an alley behind several of the enclosures to show us previous enrichment devices. There were some pretty interesting discoveries. Who would have known that anteaters like to smell dirty sneakers or that if you scratch a tapir it just might want a belly rub! We had a great time seeing the various devices and hearing the fun facts. I think the crowd favorite was the fact that the tapirs lived in fear of one of the local capybara named Matilda. Apparently Matilda was rather assertive with them and would drive them away from treats and shady spots despite the fact that they probably outweigh her by 300 pounds or more. Towards the end we were getting a little overheated and some of our members begin to show signs of slightly sick so we wrapped up quickly and hung out in one of the zoo stores to cool off before heading back to the university to wrap up the day. We ended by compiling our notes from the interview and expanding our research to answer the deep philosophical question of what does enrichment mean to a being such as a tapir!

 

Day 4 was definitely the slowest of the days. We dug deep and cranked out design criteria and began our brainstorming. I won’t call it the most entertaining day but it is nice to be moving closer to prototyping! Dr. Hunter showed us this awesome app called Post-It Plus during brainstorming that converted our boards of post-its into a digital file. I will definitely be using it once the school year starts again. I have been very impressed with how well Team Hippo has gotten along and ma looking forward to continuing with them for the next couple days! Check out some of our brainstorming in the photo below! I think this about does it for now. In the words of Caz “Don’t work too hard on this,” so in the spirit of listening to my superior I suppose I am done! More to come next Thursday!

Till next time,

Grant