Sorry I have not been able to post in awhile but here is a recap of the end of last week and the beginning of this weekend. I was productive on current project and I am going to have the opportunity to work with some teachers to develop devices to help their students have success and feel apart of society.
Thursday, June 13, Caroline and I had a meeting at a school with two special education teachers that we are going to work with. There is a shopping center on campus that is on the way to where we were to meet the girls so we went there in the morning. The shopping center we were told is where everyone does their shopping so we were excited for what we might find. Upon arriving, we realized what the shopping center was and were slightly disappointed. The center had a fruit stand, two ice cream stores, tailor shops and shops with random items. We were expecting to maybe get some sandals, a purse or a pair of linen pants. This was not the case and then we had a lot of extra time because we had allotted for shopping time We decided to venture outside the main gate in hopes of shops or a place for lunch. We ended up eating at Hot Chips for lunch. It was not the greatest so we don't plan on going back soon.
We met with aarabhi and anu from the school at the main gate of IIT. We took our first auto ride which was fun. More on autos later though. It was great to talk to aarabhi on the ride there because she is around our age. She told us about the school and about her education. Once we got to the school she showed us around a little and then introduced us to her class. Her class has eight students who are all disabled and completely dependent on their two teachers. Each student can do some simple motions like tap or pull their arm. She introduced us to each student and showed us the motions they can perform. These students range from age eighteen to twenty one.The students have no successes and do not accomplish anything so the hope is that with a device the students can make something and make a small profit on it also. Other students at the school that are more independent make block prints that are then made into folders or used to make other things. The items made are sold and the students get a profit. The students in the classroom we were in are not independent enough to create block prints.
So our task is to create a mechanical device that will allow the students to make block prints. So the student that can only pull can pull on something which will make a block dip in paint and then print on the paper. The teachers have some basic ideas but do not have the technical background to make it happen. Caroline and I were immediately excited for this extra project and began brainstorming.
Friday, June 14, morning Caroline and I did a little shopping. I needed a pair of sandals and she needed a purse. We went to an area where we heard there was a store. We called a taxi from the hotel to take us there, wait an hour while we shopped and drive us home. It was a successful trip as we both got what we needed before our trip to Pondicherry.
After returning from our weekend in Pondicherry, Caroline and I got to work sketching our ideas in the lab on Monday, June 17. This project is more a mechanical engineering task so we discussed our ideas with Tim, a ME from MSU in our group, to make sure our ideas weren't too crazy. We continued reading about different options and pro conning aspects of the idea.
Just before lunch Dr Krishnan came to the lab and we were able to speak with him. Dr. Krishnan is in charge of the research at the lab and is also the Dean of Research at IIT so he is a very busy guy so being able to speak with him was great. He gave us more details on our actual project. He was able to answer some of our questions too. After speaking with him we realized that there are a lot of things that we still need to figure out before we move further on our project. Today, June 18, we are being as productive as possible reading articles and furthering our knowledge of impact testing and about our composite samples. We will be trained on the Instron next monday. Our samples have not arrived yet so hopefully they come in this week so we can start testing once we complete our training.
Hopefully we will still have time this week to continue brainstorming our mechanical device while still furthering our actual project. Last week was kind of slow as far as research went but this week we will be much busier. We are off to meet the boys for lunch at Tiffany's on campus. I will post about my weekend in Pondicherry tonight hopefully!
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