Posts Tagged ‘college’
You Call This School? The 25 Coolest College Labs in the Country
Forget algebra homework: try building spaceships, operating a nuclear reactor or listening in to distant galaxies
Click here to launch a gallery of the coolest labs in America
Check out the 2011 additions to our list in the articles below, or browse the full set of 25 labs in our image gallery above.
Build Your Own Spaceship: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Brew the World's Best Beer: University of California at Davis Pilot Brewery
Probe the Ocean Deep: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Work On the Edge of Earth's Plates: California Institute of Technology Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences
Design a Microdrone: U.S. Army Research Laboratory, Aberdeen Proving Ground
Run a Nuclear Reactor: Reed College
Print New Body Parts: Cornell University Creative Machines Lab
Put Science on the Big Screen: University of Southern California Visualizing Science Initiative
Eavesdrop on Nearby Galaxies: National Radio Astronomy Observatory
Make a Better Soldier: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Human Performance Wing
Building, Launching, and Landing a Rover (All Before Going to College)
The first time we launched, the parachute didn’t deploy. The robot fell 2,000 feet and shattered. It wasn’t too big a deal cutting new parts to make another, but we needed to figure out a better release system for the parachute. So I climbed onto my roof and threw the rover off a few times with different parachute designs. When we launched the newer system, the parachute worked great, but the sensors that were supposed to release the parachute after the rover had landed malfunctioned and released 100 feet before touchdown. The rover almost landed in a lake!
I designed and programmed the microcontroller in the robot. The hard part was determining what state the robot was in: inside the rocket, in the air, or on the ground. I set up a system of accelerometers and barometers to detect launch, apogee and landing with accelerations and altitudes. The robot can avoid collisions, navigate, and find an outlet to charge itself.
The whole process took longer than expected because of school and college applications and graduation. But after two years, we entered the competition. We were the first to have a working rover.
Youk and classmates at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, competed in the Federation of Galaxy Explorers’ Battle of the Rockets in April.
PopSci’s Guide To The 30 Coolest College Classes in the Country
Here's where you can learn to blow stuff up, scale 150-foot trees, make toys and catch lightning--all for college credit
Over the years, PopSci has pulled together annual lists of the coolest, funnest college labs, the places where we would like to have spent our youth tinkering, exploring, and learning. , we've collected the ultimate list of all the great labs we've ever covered.
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for our full illustrated list of the coolest college labs in the country.