We just got back from our evening activities. Tonight there was a basketball tournament, a fashion show, journal decorating, and ice cream making. I first got my journal and then chose and glued on my letters. After that, I went to make ice cream. The mixture was pretty easy (sugar, half-and-half, and vanilla extract), but when it came to shake it in the ice, I wasn't very good with it. It was supposed to take about 5 minutes to shake it solid, but it took me over 20 minutes. After about 20 minutes, I switched bags, and it finally worked. So apparently there was no salt in my first one. It was really good though. I liked the ice cream a lot. Too bad there wasn't more...

So, now I guess I'm waiting for the food. We're getting Mexican food tonight from Roberto's. Carne asada fries and burritos, I think. There's a TapEx trip tomorrow (Tapioca Express) during free time, but I'm not sure if I'll go or not. Still, the food should be good. Hmmm, it'll be coming soon. Good night!

~CS

This morning we had our last Discovery Lecture. Today, Dr. Mark A. Brosmer spoke to us about space launches and launch vehicles. He started off with a history of man's space explorations and observations and then proceeded to talk about the basics of rocket functions and their various uses. Next, he discussed the launch vehicles used in the past and their inefficiencies (very specific and therefore inefficient in terms of infrastructure required) as well as today's launch vehicles and their improvements (more cost-efficient in being able to launch many different types of structures). Last, he talked about the planned space and launch vehicle programs for the future, such as NASA's Constellation program. I found his lecture very interesting. I had never known very much about space exploration and space launches, so I was glad to learn more about them, especially with his down-to-earth emphasis on the importance of reducing costs in building them.

After the Discovery Lecture, we went back to the computer lab where we spend our Tuesdays and Thursdays. We spent all of today working on our final projects. After working on a preliminary version of our final project PowerPoint, I went to lunch. Chantal and I went to a Japanese restaurant and then met Tiffany, Shannon, and Lily downstairs in Price Center. Afterward we went to the bookstore, and then Shannon and Chantal went to Jamba Juice. When we got back to the computer lab for the afternoon, we continued work. My group went up to EBU2 for a little bit to try to build a model for our experiment and then came back down. Hopefully Dr. Vera will come soon to help us a bit with our projects.

With nothing but final project work, the day was pretty uneventful (although much needed). Our biggest event of the day was the earthquake in the morning. We just felt a mild shaking. I wonder where the epicenter was and how strong it was... Hope everyone's fine!

~CS

This week has been a fun one. The Sunday night BBQ (which I forgot to mention) was very tasty. The desserts were excellent. Yesterday night, I ended up going to yoga. It was an enjoyable and relaxing workout. I heard that the roommate trivia game had everyone answering very strange questions, so in a way I'm glad I wasn't answering the questions. Anyway, I liked the yoga workout, although I wished that they would play some of the more advanced videos with possibly more challenging poses. Maybe that wouldn't have been possible for some things like a headstand, because the floor in Middle Earth wasn't very suitable for such things.

On a lower note, the game of Gotchya is over with no winners. Apparently, some or all of the 6 people left in the game as of yesterday showed such poor sportsmanship last night that the RA's decided to discontinue the game. I haven't heard the details, but I do know that the game became a bit too intense yesterday.

I'm going to go back to work on my final project PowerPoint, so good day!

~CS

Yesterday's labs were fun. In the morning our group fixed our tensegrity plate of 3-bar units, and then we constructed a tensegrity plate of 4 4-bar units. We didn't make a tensegrity plate for 6-bar units though. Daniel connected the entire cluster's 3-bar tensegrity plates, and we took turns lying on the "bed." It was fairly comfortable, but eventually one of the sticks snapped because the person hadn't distributed her weight well (she sat down on it instead of immediately lying down and distributing weight over the whole thing).

Afterwards, we worked on connectivity diagrams for the 3-bar Snelson prism and a tensegrity tower. In the afternoon, we learned how to actually build a tensegrity tower, which was pretty fun. One of our attempts failed. We were trying to build a 2-story 4-bar tower, and we accidentally used 9 sticks instead of 8. So we got a pentagon instead of a square on top. We successfully fixed it, though.

So those were our labs for the day. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to finish building and performing our tests. If not, I suppose we'll have to settle for just making a model instead of experimenting with our model. Have a nice day!

~CS