Human Powered Toy Vehicle

At the Louisville Science Center today I picked up a vehicle somewhat had built at the model table and used it in my circuits demonstration. It was a nice design and I used for my morning and afternoon demonstrations. The morning demo was a little different than the afternoon in that I had a chance to change the vehicle frame to incorporate the fan motor horizontally.
Here is a picture from a movie I took of the vehicle at rest at the end of the table.
This picture shows the vehicle moving away from the camera being propelled by the spinning fan as I power it with the dynamo.

The picture below shows the afternoon car with and expanded back frame that shows the rubber band attached motor with the connection wires fastened to the front.

This image shows the morning version with a narrow top frame and the motor attached with 4 rubber bands. The motor started to fall off and one of the rubber bands broke after 16 moved the car down the table.

Neat idea but not built to last.

It was good to see that design work and get some children to think about creative ways to use their toys.

Amaryllis in Bloom

One of the amaryllis flowers is now fully opened and it is beautiful. The camera could not quite capture its true beauty though.

I also include a daffodil from the IUS campus where they are blooming all over the grounds.

Progress on Cephalopod Render

ted.com

Tonight at the end of my programming class, the professor started playing a video on the overhead screen about marine biology. It was pretty neat to watch and he told us it was from www.ted.com. According to the site it stands for Technology Entertainment and Design.

So when I got home and decided to watch a few videos. One by Cliff Stolls (needs to stay away from the caffeine) and another by Pamelia Kurstin and her theremin. There is a theremin in the Louisville Science Center but I have not seen music to that level performed on it.

Very cool!

Daffodils

Here are some pictures of daffodils blooming on the campus of Indiana University Southeast (IUS) campus. These flowers are the harbinger of spring.

Fossils

I have some more fossil pictures. One of a crinoid stem with multiple branches.


These are pieces of crinoid calyx.

That brown looking mushroom piece is a crinoid calyx.

Here are some blastoids sitting on a ruler.

More Fossils

Yesterday with the nice weather, took the opportunity to hunt for fossils it was a great trip. I found my first blastoid (see second picture). Very nice horn corals were found and I found another trilobite but only half of one this time.

I will post some more pictures once I them processed.

New Science Demo

I created a new demo today using the a creation out of the build your own vehicle area and the circuits demo. After taking a vehicle someone else had made and make some structural reinforcements, I took some rubber bands and secured a electric motor and fan blade to it. The power leads from the motor were attached to a small dynamo. As I held up the wires, kids would come up and crank the dynamo creating enough power to drive the fan blade to push the vehicle over the table. It worked pretty well and I think the kids enjoyed trying to move the car back and forth over the table.

Shells at the Louisville Science Center

Here are some pictures of some shells displayed at the Discovery Gallery in the Louisville Science Center. I was researching some patterns for my cephalopod project and took these pictures of specimens behind the glass display.

Ammonites have such nice patterns on their shells.

Cephalopod Render

Okay, I am making progress on the rendering the cephalopod. Learned some new techniques in making arms and shaping the head. Made another eye that looks like it has a cataract but I am making progress.

Easter Snow Shower

Around 7 PM on Easter, it started snowing. It seemed to snow for about an hour and afterwards the grass was covered by snow. It melted this morning but it was odd to see it snow so much on Easter.

Below are some pictures showing the snow fall right after it started to fall.

Pink Tulips

Here are some tulips blooming in the sunroom.

The blooms will close up in the night and then open back up in the day time.

More Fossils

Here is a rock with a fragment of a trilobite tail in it.


Here is rugose horn coral that I cut the end off with a diamond saw so it ring pattern would show up better. I then started to polish it with high grit sandpaper.

Mystery Rock Probably Identified

I visited the place where the mystery rock came from and I thought it came out of a pond out in a farm field. It came from a shale bed that had a pond on it. So it looks more and more likely the rock was a marcasite nodule. This is iron sulfide or a form of pyrite. I am not sure how to tell the crystal structure so maybe it is pyrite or marcasite or some mixture.

Here are some pictures of the New Albany shale layer dug up in Memphis Indiana.

Concept Idea of Cephalopod Look

Here is Autodesk Maya render of a cephalopod. I created one arm then replicated it across the the body just to make the model more complete it does but the creature looks very stiff and artificial.

Flowers

Rainy days are here but the first tulip flower has emerged. It is pink. It looks like there are two more almost ready to bloom.

The amaryllis flower stalk continues to grow taller.

Two of the daffodil bulbs are showing life and growth is beginning to appear.

Maya Cephalopod Shell

I have been working on the body of the cephalopod so I made a few texture changes and made this render of the shell. The UV mapping of a Photoshop image to the arms is not going so well for me. It comes down to how good are you at teaching yourself.

Mystery Rock Part 2

I took a diamond saw and cut the rock into that was pulled out of a drained pond on a farm in Indiana. It was messy experience with the surface of the rock coming off and getting all over me. The water from the wet saw as spraying everywhere.

The rock appears to be pyrite. It was dull looking when I cut it so I started polishing it with 800, 1000 and 2000 grit wet sandpaper.

Cephalopod Render

For my next class project render, I am working on a cephalopod. This particular cephalopod is classified as Dawsonoceras. I guess for the ridges in its shell.

Here is an early render of the shell.

Amaryllis

Finally, after maybe a year the amaryllis plant is forming a bloom. This is a great flower but it takes a while to bloom. I have 3 other plants that came from this bulb. The smallest is about the size of large green onion.

Tulip Update

Here are some pictures from about 2 days ago showing the progress of the tulips. The largest plant now has almost 1 leaf out and is forming others.

Snow... Snow.... Snow

This picture below shows snow at the middle of the driveway which almost to 10 inches and still climbing.

Orthographic Cephalopod Sketch

This sketch was made completely digital using Corel Painter Essentials 2 and a Wacom Intuos tablet. I need to get another subject for Maya rendering and this looked like a pretty good one to try.

Exploded View of Maya Project

Here are some more images of the project I submitted today. It went pretty well but my Powerpoint presentation went I little haywire when I was presenting. Next time I will make some adjustments to keep that from happening.

Something Attached to Cephalopod Fossil

If you look closely at the photo below, you will see a wire like blackish item attached to a ridge on this cephalopod shell fossil.

I think it might be the base of crinoid that never got beyond being very small. There appears to be remants of another one a little higher up from the first one in the photo as well.

Tulips and Daffodils

I took some old milk jugs and turned them into planters for some tulip and daffodil bulbs I bought back in October 2007. I was afraid that the bulbs would die if I left them in the garage much longer without being planted. So I took the last of some potting soil and planted them about a week ago.

The bulbs are beginning to sprout with the tulips growing the fastest. I am keeping them in the sun room with the temperature varying throughout the day to the mid-60s to mid-70s F and a humidity of 40-80%. One tulip plant seems to be growing about 1 inch a day.

Once the temperatures warm up for good for spring I will plant them outside to make a flower bed of irises, tulips (Tulipa), daffodils (Narcissus), and balloon flowers (Platycodon grandiflorus).