Hello everyone!

This first week of SEED, also my first internship, has been absolutely fantastic! I’m glad to be back in the OEDK to work on projects.  I’m off campus, but I still choose to walk every day to enjoy the morning and thinking about what we will do today.  So far it has not disappointed, as we have quickly went through the ENGI 120 class until now, at a very comfortable pace.

We have started a mini project in collaboration with the Houston Zoo. One of their red river hogs (an example pictured below) is becoming overweight, so they tasked us with designing a feeder for that specific hog. Their current feeders takes around ten minutes for the hog, Luna, to fully eat while the zookeepers want to double or triple that.  Today we have finished with brainstorming, and will move on to selecting our design tomorrow.  My team has brainstormed an idea that I am very excited about.  While their current systems uses hard plastics, we want to use a car tire as the base of our solution.  I saw that the hogs had toys that included a car tire, bowling ball, and other everyday items.  We hope to tightly insert a small tire inside the big tire, with a PVC pipe in the center. The plan is that the food will go through small holes in the PVC to the round area between the tires, then travel a distance until they go out another hole in the outside of the tire.  I really like this solution because it uses simple materials, and it extends the feeding time by making the pig have to engage with the tire (flipping and rolling it) to eat.

This week’s main focus has been in learning the Engineering Design Process, so while we learn it through the hog project we also have done some exercises in meetings.  In one of them we had to hold a textbook as high as we could for twenty seconds, using only tape, 1 ft of string, and 6 pieces of printer paper. Three of the four groups, my group included, chose to attach two pieces of paper lengthwise and form a tripod to support our book.  As our TA’s said when we placed the book on it: “You just watched your dreams crash and burn.”  We did not leave enough material to brace the beams, and the win went to the fourth team, who created a short and stable lil thang.  In the heat of the time crunch, we had forgotten the basics of engineering, to make sure stuff don’t break.  Part of the reason I am so excited for the tire solution to the hog problem is that it is simple and stable, having what our crushed tower lacked.

I’ll go ahead and write my personal goals for the summer, then hopefully I’ll look back and write during the last week of SEED if I think I’ve achieved them.  My main focus here is to learn to be an engineering leader.  I hope to lead or contribute to a team in a way that garners respect, and I will continue to work on this until I know I can be a great leader.  After that I hope to improve my workplace professionalism, and be able to form a healthy comradeship with whoever I work with.  Someone once said to reach for the stars, and I believe the stars that I should reach for are those already inside of me.