SCI/TECH
8 - April 23, 2013
the Florida tech crimson
Senior design showcase features more than 100 projects
photo by kelsey mcmullan The Building a Better Home team explains their project at the Senior Design Showcase.
Kelsey McMullan Sci/Tech Editor This year’s student design showcase featured physically large and intimidating projects, an upset in the chemistry department and a significant lack of chairs. “The projects are awesome. I’m interested in computer engineering so I was looking at those closely and looking at their code,” said Santiago Roig Jr. a visiting prospective student from Pittsburgh PA. “It’s like a big kids’ science fair.” Towering over most of the other projects, the Vector Bravo Rocket from aerospace engineering and the home design sample from Building A Better Home from civil engineering stood out among the crowd.
The Enhanced Roller Coaster Vehicle project weighs between 500-700 pounds, according to senior mechanical engineer Amanda Bessette, and took 12 students to carry into the showcase. “I was very excited. I’ve worked for two years on this project and its exciting to see it coming together and coming to an end,” said space science major Marie McBride. Design programs can range from two years to just a semester. Many of the teams participating in the showcase had to wade through swaps of paperwork to secure funding, endure marathon sessions on a computer working on papers and processing data and listen to their advisers critique and tear apart their hard work week after week. This years showcase featured over 100 projects and took place
on April 19, with an encore performance during Discovery Day, an event for prospective students and their families on April 20. While showcases in years past have provided tables and chairs for students to use and display their projects on, this year students were only provided with tables. Many of the students that arrived first noticed the lack of chairs and migrated the chairs from the Center Court Cafe to their stations. While the showcase primarily features the work done by seniors getting ready to graduate, younger students are not restricted from participating. Sophomore chemical engineering major Daniel DeLellis, advised by Nasri Nesnas, took home the prize for Best in Show for Chemistry with his project, Detecting
Compare and contrast: Office software suites Christopher Pangalos Staff Writer
Microsoft Office Home and Student 2013 $140 Microsoft Office is the most widely used office suite among businesses and schools. It commonly includes Microsoft Word for text documents, Excel for spreadsheets, PowerPoint for presentations and Publisher for flyers and brochures among other programs. Microsoft Office boasts high system compatibility, speed and a variety of file types with many tools and features. Word and PowerPoint have a fairly straightforward interface that even beginners should be able to use for tasks that aren’t overly complex. Excel, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult to use and requires some practice, though the newer versions have made it a bit easier to create graphs and charts. A few years ago Microsoft office completely changed its interface which many users found more difficult to use in addition their dreaded DocX default extension caused compatibility issues on many word processors with no noticeable benefit; this has led some to stick with older versions of Microsoft Office.
Open office Apache License Free Open Office was one of the first and most popular free office suites to rival Microsoft office. It contains its own word processor (Writer), spreadsheet software (Calc), Presentation software (Impress), in addition to an image editor and equation tools. Open Office is compatible with most systems but tends to run much more slowly than Microsoft Office and has a process that uses RAM even when it’s not running. Open Office has gone through several developers from Star Office to Sun Microsystems to Oracle, then to Apache in 2011, which lead to the creation of Libre Office. Newer versions of Open Office are com-
patible with DocX files, though there are occasionally formatting issues. Some users find the interface a bit more straightforward similar to earlier versions of Microsoft Office.
Libre Office GNU License Free Libre Office was created by the Document Foundation, comprised of members of the Open Office community who had complaints that Open Office had become a corporate project by Oracle rather than a community work. After their establishment, the Document Foundation invited Oracle to join, who responded by asking all Document Foundation members to resign their positions on the Open Office community council. As a result, Open Office was left with only Oracle employees and Libre Office became a completely independent project. This lead to many Linux distributions (particularly Ubuntu) choosing to ship Ubuntu their operating systems due to its independent nature. Due to its common nature, Libre Office is very similar to Open Office with the exception of a more advanced image editor, though it’s main advantage is its support. New releases and updates for Libre Office are released much more frequently than those of Open Office and Libre Office runs more smoothly, repairing many minor glitches of Open Office and having better compatibility with Microsoft Office.
Google Drive/Documents Free While not a standard office suite, Google Docs provides the same features as Microsoft and Libre office straight from the internet. Google Docs includes a word processor, spreadsheet, PowerPoint editor and image editor. Files can be saved on the Google Drive in standard formats including .pptx and be downloaded when needed, making it useful for students who don’t have time to install an office suite.
Citrus Greening in Florida’s Orange Trees. “I felt that it was well presented,” said Santiago Roig Sr. His wife, Theresa, agreed. “The whole thing was very impressive,” she said. While the showcase is a great way to display the wide variety of research that students participate in, they are also competing for awards. Taking home the Northrop Grumman Award for Engineering was the Vector Bravo project from aerospace engineering. The Vector Bravo team worked on developing a vector control system for a rocket. “Its definitely an honor. All our hard work came together; it was worth something,” aerospace engineering major Chris Jarry said. “There were so many good projects here this year, though, so it wasn’t expected, but it was nice.” Teammate John Kreinbring was also pleased with the result. “We were so happy. We were hopeful of getting it, or at least some award,” Kreinbring said. “We felt that we had done a really good job and we worked on time and under budget.” The project underwent rigorous testing, according to Jarry. “You can see all the veins that are charred and everything like that. That’s the one we threw on the Florida Tech thrust stand,” Jarry said. “Our projected and actual data came out pretty close.” Also on the Vector Bravo team were Joe Bussenger, Josh Camara, Brett Cantalupo, Nate Higgins, Jake Kapfhamer, Shane Price, Suresh Singh and Kyle Wickham. The team was advised by Mark Archambault. McBride, advised by N.E. Turner, took home an award for Best in Show for Space Science and The Northrop Grumman Award in Science with her project, First-Time Analysis of Restored Apollo 14 and
15 DTREM Instrument Data. “I’ve been studying one of the instruments the Apollo astronauts left on the surface of the moon,” McBride said. She has been analyzing temperature and radiation data that was collected during a seven year time frame. “The goal of the research is to turn it into a public data set that can be presented to the whole lunar community.” The President’s Award for Science went to Matthew Callan Malczyk for his project, Mathematics: Music to My Ears. Malczyk also won Best in Show for Mathematical Science and was advised by Munevver Mine Subasi and assisted by graduate student Kshetrajna Raghavan. The civil engineering project Building a Better Home took home the President’s Award in Engineering, a first for the department. “We knew we had a big project, we knew we had a lot on the table, but being that it wasn’t your typical mechanical or aerospace project we weren’t sure how they were going to accept it, were they going to hold it to the same standards,” said senior civil engineering student Colin Barbalace. “We were scared at first, because they went through the individual department best in shows and then someone else got it.” Also on the Building a Better House project were Mark Anderson, Earle Jackson, and Brandon Richgruber. The team was advised by Ralph Locurcio. “We were like ‘uh-oh,’ we were really nervous, and then the very last award, the President’s award was announced and they called us,” Barbalance said. “We were very happy and honored to accept it.”
Gadget Corner Joseph Stoltz Staff Writer
The first gadget up on the list is for the prankster in all of us, and this lovely little device is known as the Phantom Keystroker V2, otherwise known as “the device that will get you fired,” or “the device that will make you single” or “the device that will end all life on Earth.” A simple USB device, the Phantom Keystroker V2 allows for the prankster to have the options of choosing from turning on the victim’s caps lock, random typing on the screen, losing mouse control, or all of the above. There is even an additional time delay option for a more realistic faux malware feel. This gadget is great for revenge on annoying siblings, or just to cause mayhem. If you would like to partake in this prank delight, then all you have to do is take a spin over to ThinkGeek and pay a measly $9.99, the perfect price for an awesome birthday party favor to give out to kids. The next set of gadgets is for the people caught in the middle of the Great Florida Tech Raccoon Conflict of 2013. The first gadget is for the anti-raccoon side. This gadget will be loved for its artistic presentation and shrilling sounds in the morning. If you have ever felt that the best way to get out of bed is to hear both a dog’s howling barks and a raccoon’s shrilling screeches at the top of its lungs, then this great alarm clock is perfect for you. The clock sports a resin tree with a raccoon daintily sticking its head out of the tree, while a beagle has its paws elegantly placed on the side of the tree with its mouth wide open, waiting for the raccoon as though it might fall. All of this is placed on the black base that is the alarm clock. If you are interested in this lovely piece of “hill art,” good luck finding one since the store that was selling them, HuntSmart.com, no longer has them listed for sale. The clock went for a very low price of $39.99. Any supporter of the raccoons in the conflict should be showing their support by wearing this next gadget: the illustrious Talking Raccoon hat. Even if you’re not a supporter and you just want to roam the world while stalking people to spread rabies and distemper, you should be wearing this hat. It is a highly fashionable head vestment that will make you will look distinguished while your raccoon pride shines. To add to the uniqueness, with a press of a button, your hat will lift its tail in dignity while, as its distributors put it, “it makes two different sounds that make everybody cry with laughter.” Elegantly crafted with polyester and other such affluently made materials, this hat will surely be the pride of your clothing collection for only a mere price of $69.99 that you will sacrifice to Bim Bam Banana; yes, that’s it’s real name.