Urban League Summer Camp: Day 6

So today may have been Monday, but we weren't going to let that get us down - Dr. Mike Jackson over in Microelectronic Engineering was going to give us a tour, yay! So after discussing the schedule for the next couple days, and freaking out over the hostage baby balloon scandal (apparently Sterling was babysitting, uh-oh...), we hoofed over to Engineering Hall and met Dr. Mike and his student helper Nate.

First we learned about what MicroE even is, and what microelectronic engineers do. Here Dr. Mike is showing us a circuit board.

One thing microelectronic engineers do is figure out how to make circuit boards tiny. Here Dr. Mike is showing us a silicon wafer, which has hundreds of tiny circuits on it. This way circuits can be made smaller and more cost effectively.

Now it's time to go into the clean rooms! First we have to clean off our shoes.

Then we have to get suited up!

Here we all are (me included) in our clean hoods, suits, shoe covers, safety goggles, and gloves.

This is in the Photolithography room. No, my color balance isn't off - this is basically a "dark room" for photolithography. The photosensitive emulsion is sensitive to ultraviolet light, so UV and blue are filtered out of the lights. That leaves us with red and green (as in, yellow).

Here Dr. Mike is showing us some circuits and discussing how silicon discs get made.

Here we discussed each step of the manufacturing process and looked at silicon wafers at each step. Using the camera and microscope (Imaging Science FTW!), the circuits can be inspected and problems can be troubleshooted.

Now Nate is going to help us etch a wafer.

Watching the machine do the etching. We used sulfur and fluorine gases in the process. In the end we were able to measure the difference in thickness to see how much we shaved off.

After this we headed back to CIS to revisit the vision lab, who graciously invited us back to see another type of eye tracker. This time, Prati and Liz explained the SMI eye tracker, which is a fixed device (as opposed to the portable eye tracker). Here, the subject sits at a computer equipped with the device and simply looks around, without having to wear any equipment.

Watching a silent episode of Jeopardy using the SMI eyetracker.

After this we were out of time. On their way out the door, the kids were telling me again how much fun they had today! Yeah!

Once again there are many more images from today than what I posted here. Check them out on the CIS Picasa site.

Urban League Summer Camp: Hostage crisis!

So on Friday, Sterling arrived with a bag full of little balloons with faces drawn on them that he was calling his "babies". He was super protective and concerned for their well being, afraid that someone might try to take them or hurt them. Anyways, I have no idea where they came from (probably an activity earlier in the day), but nonetheless there they were. He was even afraid to leave them in the Fishbowl while we went up on the roof to see the telescope, and hid them behind a curtain behind the podium.

Well apparently, one of them got left behind - because today when I opened up the Fishbowl, I found THIS:

MINUS THE BALLOON. The hostage-taker doesn't seem to be making any demands, yet... We'll just have to wait and see, I guess.

College and Careers

So today was Day 2 of the second session of the 2011 College and Careers program. High school students entering their senior year in the fall spend 2 days on campus (with an optional overnight in the dorms) exploring RIT and future career opportunities. Among other informational and social events, there are 4-1 hour long program/career workshops that the students sign up for in advance. My particular role was to facilitate the Imaging Science workshops, of which there were only 3 because the first one was canceled due to low enrollment. This year we featured the Innovative Freshmen Experience class and their PTM dome. Nadya helped me out with the first session, and Ashley with the second two. We talked about Imaging Science, RIT, and careers after college, and ran demos with Betsy (the dome). Overall we had 19 students visit between the three sessions, which in all honestly is a disappointingly low number; although this did allow for very personal interaction. Hopefully the students had fun today and enjoyed their overall C&C experience. If we piqued the interest of even 1 student enough to motivate them to apply for Imaging Science at RIT, it will have been worth it.

Urban League Summer Camp: Day 5

TGIF! Today was a lot of fun. First, we went up on the roof so that Roger could demonstrate a real telescope!

Looking out at the airport control tower

Looking at sun spots!

More sunspots!

(Note, do NOT try to look at sun spots at home! Roger's telescope had a special filter on it that made it safe to look at the sun. Do not attempt such a thing unless you are armed with the right equipment!)

It was sizzlin hot up there, so we went back to the Fishbowl to chill out for a little bit before starting our experiments with the thermal camera. And what better way to cool off than with some FlavorIce!

Brainfreeze!

Relaxing with a nice cold one.

After we had a chance to cool off, we headed out with the camera. First stop was some trees - A, so we could see what they looked like, and B so we could see whether we could play hide and go seek in them.

BUSTED!

Today wasn't the best day to try to see people outside, because it was so hot out that people blended in pretty well to a lot of backgrounds! So we moved on to the ice rink for another chance to cool off.

After just getting into the ice rink - the camera didn't recalibrate the temp range yet, so I was able to snag this awesome picture of the whole group. Can you guess who is wearing shorts and who is wearing pants?

The zamboni happened to be going around when we were there! Also check out the other people/

This picture is my fav. You can see which parts of the ice have been refinished and which ones haven't yet!

The zamboni as it is half way past the glass - Now you see it, now you don't.

One of the students is wearing snowpants - what an effective insulator they are!

The floor was so cold that if someone walked on it in bare feet, we could retrace their steps.

Outside with the snowpants still on - still working pretty well! Except for the pockets where his hands are (they are actually INSIDE the pockets in this picture). Also, look at how cold his ears got.

We then ventured back out into the summer heat to try to check a few more items off our experiment list. The SAU cafeteria was closed, so we went on to Javas. (The first time I have been able to get the group to speed up their pace was when I said the College & Careers tour group we were stuck behind were going to try to go to the library and Javas. Nobody wanted to have to wait in line, so all of a sudden, the kids got speedy....) I came prepared with a pocket full of Javas wooden tokens so that I could treat the kids to drinks - which we could also image and do some experiments with.

A side-by-side view of our drinks. You can tell the difference between the iced coffees, smoothies, and (of course) the hot coffee pretty easily!

Hot + Iced coffees. You can even see the Javas logo on the styrofoam cup!

Pouring some hot coffee into the cold coffee!

Mmmmmm, smoothie through a straw.

There are a lot of other great pictures from today too, like some really excellent ones of cars in the parking lot. Check them out along with all the other pictures taken so far here.

We regrouped back in the Fishbowl before calling it a day. I told the kids that we were invited back to the vision lab to see another eye tracking system on Monday, and they were really excited! Also, a few of the kids said how much they enjoyed the telescope and looking at sun spots. All of a sudden I'm wondering whether we actually will be able to fit everything in that we want to do after all. Time is starting to fly by.

On their way out the door, the kids told me they had a lot of fun today!

Urban League Summer Camp: Day 4

Today we did a whole bunch of things. The day started with visiting various Astronomy/Insight Lab projects, starting with the SCUBE:

The SCUBE is an immersive learning environment that surrounds you on all 4 sides with projected scenes. The group navigated the solar system, witnessed the evolution of the elephant, and flew around inside a monkey's brain.

After this we headed over to see the Digital Solar Explorer. The DSE is a "cheap and simple" version of "science on a sphere"-type exhibits - basically, a giant illuminated globe. But part of what makes DSE different is that it is used to explore other planets besides Earth, and is controlled using a Wiimote.

HS Intern Matt explains his summer work with the DSE.

The DSE, exploring our moon.

The DSE operates using Google Earth, which allows for pushpin overlays. These pins include fun facts and other information about what you're looking at.

After giving everyone a chance to play around with the DSE, we headed back to begin planning what we would do tomorrow with the thermal camera. We'll be using a portable thermal camera, which will give us the chance to explore many different things. Here's a list of what we came up with:

We already have a pretty extensive list, but I bet we'll think of a lot more as we explore campus with the camera tomorrow. To help inspire the students and give them ideas, I demonstrated the FLIR camera and took pictures of everyone that they could print out and keep.

Thermal portraits...

...Always a hit.

Once 2:30 came around it was time for us to go on the (previously postponed) visit to the vision lab!

HS interns Prati and Liz were there to explain their summer research and demonstrate the portable eye tracker. They outfitted one of the students with the eye tracker, led him through calibration using Dr. Pelz as the target, and then sent him on a mission to find my office.

Prati outfits one of the students with the portable eye tracker. If you look on the computer monitor, the video on the left is the subject's eye, while the video on the right is the scene he is observing.

There is even an iPhone app that allows you to watch video of the subject's eye.

The latest trends in portable eye tracking fashion.

Here's the student searching for my office - and cheating by asking for directions.

After finding my office and returning to the lab, Liz processed the video while Prati explained what's going on.

After about 5 minutes of calibration and processing, the video was ready for us to watch. We all got to relive the quest to find my office through the subject's eyes! You can too, by checking out the video below.

(The first 35 seconds of Dr. Pelz wiggling his thumb are for calibration. Then the fun begins.)

And that was more than enough for one day! The students really seemed to have a lot of fun with this one. And the lab had fun with us, too - we've been invited back to check out more of the eye tracking devices next week.

Urban League Summer Camp: Day 3

Today, the kids came a bit early! I guess this was to make up for being late yesterday.

I started off by letting everyone pick their prizes from the scavenger hunt. I think a few more prizes got taken than were won, but I won't tell anyone...

Next I wanted to go over what activities we could do for the remainder of the camp, so that the students could prioritize, brainstorm, and plan what they want to do moving forward. I had a calendar drawn out on a white board, with a few activities already filled in (tours and presentations that are already established). On another white board, I listed all the activities we could do and the labs we could visit. I then showed really quick examples of the activities, so that the kids would have a better idea of what they would be doing. For the example for high speed video, I used the clip of my doggy, Duchess the toy poodle, incessantly licking peanut butter from her mouth:

Heh heh. Anyways, from there I left it up to the students to map out what they wanted to do. Here's what we ended up with:

And from there, we started planning out some of the experiments in detail. We focused on high speed video first, and the students came up with a list of things that they thought might be interesting to watch in slow motion. After that, we focused on some of the more complicated experiments so that we could be sure we knew what kind of experimental set up we would need, and what materials that would require:

At this point we needed to move on to the optics kits, so we will have to put off planning for thermal imaging until tomorrow.

The kids each got their own optics kits and split up into 3 groups. I assigned each group 3 activities from within the kits and gave them half an hour to figure out as much as they could. There were some extra materials not in the kits that we didn't have handy so for some exercises the teams had to improvise. While I mostly left it up to them to figure out the experiments as a team, I floated around helping answer questions and help with setup wherever I was needed. 

Fun with polarizers

Fun with diffraction gratings

Once the half hour was up, each team then had to get up and present what they had done to the rest of the group who would then follow along. I chimed in with questions to help the teams through the exercises and demonstrate what they learned. The teams presented on things such as Galilean telescopes, mirrors, Keplarian telescopes, holograms, lenses, fresnel lenses, and polarizers.

Presenting on mirrors.

Viewing an anamorphosis.

Help viewing an anamorphosis.

Overall I'm not sure that this half of the day really played out how I intended it to. Hopefully the students learned a little something about optics today and will want to try out some of the other experiments in their kits that they got to keep.