Today wraps up the first week of the SEED program at Rice University for the summer of 2017. It has been a great experience so far. Having not taken any engineering design classes before, I’ve learned many things about the engineering design process, working in teams, engineering communication, and what an 8-5 style workweek entails.

Day 1: 

My day started off at 7am, when I took the Metro bus and rail down to Rice, coming from northeast Houston. The internship got off to a great start at 9am on Monday, June 12th at the Oshmann Engineering Design Kitchen. We did a couple ice breakers to where we got to know everyone’s name and where they’re from. We then took the inner loop bus shuttle down to RUPD to check out Rice ID’s for the international  students. After a couple more logistics, we took at trip the zoo.

Having grown up in Houston since I was 6, I’ve never been to the Houston Zoo. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but disregarding the hot weather, I had a great experience! Jeremy, our TA, assigned us to a scavenger hunt around the zoo. We got in small teams, and walked around to many of the exhibits, scavenging for facts about all the animals. To everyone’s surprise, Jeremy had not updated the zoo questions, and we had trouble finding many of the exhibits on the list. Despite these challenges, we were able to find the answer to the riddle question: What do animals do when they party? -Turtle down for what? We all had a good laugh

I noticed a lot of the animals seemed sad. They were confined to a small space and taken away from much of their natural surroundings. I wondered if there was any other type of stimulation or device that could fix this problem and maintain happy animals.

Day 2: 

We had some more fun Icebreakers, an OEDK tour, and a safety lesson. Even though I come in the OEDK all the time during the school year, I was surprised at how much I didn’t know. I’ve never set foot in the machine shop (and I still haven’t, actually), but I’ve learned where the first aid kits are and noticed a lot of smaller features of the OEDK, that have taught me to appreciate it to a new level. After this, we had a deconstruction session. We were given a bunch of old devices, including a pump, an old projector TV, a printer, and a cooler thing. My team picked out a pump and started to deconstruct it. It consisted of a DC motor and some type of controller, which moves 2 pistons up and down in a sealed chamber and compress air. It was quite tricky to take it completely apart. We had to drill some holes, pry the mounts open with a jack, and figure out a bunch of tricky screwdrivers and things to take it all apart.

After deconstruction and lunch, we were assigned to teams to make presentations on our culture. It was very interesting to learn about the culture of other countries and university life.

We were assigned homework for the night, which was watching videos about the engineering design process. I found them very informative and compelling with how analytical they described the process to be.

Day 3: 

The beginning of our bootcamp. We were introduced to our task: making a toy for the Okapi, a relative of the giraffe. We started researching like crazy, and then compiled a list of 20 questions to ask the zookeepers about the Okapi. In the afternoon, we visited the zoo, to interview the zookeeper, Kim. We got a better idea of the device that they wanted.

Day 4: 

We took time to brainstorm solutions and define our design criteria. We came up with lots of design solutions. We played a telephone game to practice communicating and projecting across a room.

Day 5: 

Today! I’m writing the blog this morning! but later today we will be screening through our potential solutions to arrive on a final one. We’ve thought about how we can stimulate one or more senses of the okapi, either by touch, smell, sounds, or sight. They also have a large tongue (18 inches long!) that they use to play with things, eat, and clean their face. We’re looking for solutions that allow them to exercise their tongue.

Overview:

Overall I’m pretty excited for this project, since it gives us the chance to improve the life of the Okapi at the zoo. Potentially making the zookeeper’s life easier meanwhile also keeping the Okapi happy.

I look forward for what’s to come in the coming weeks. Although the days have been longer than what I’ve been used to, and the homework and quizzes are more than I expected, I can say that this week has been the most rewarding and educational of any job I’ve ever had. I really look forward to building the prototypes, getting a project with a team, and learning engineering skills from my peers around me. I’m very grateful for all those around me which have helped me throughout this week. The metro bus driver that has brought me here in the mornings, our TA Jeremy, which has enlightened us with his engineering design experience, and of course the instructors, Dr. Wettergreen and Dr. Hunter, which have taught us valuable skills I will carry on for the rest of my engineering career (which will be a long time)!