New Journey for Carmelo in Physics Career

Waiting for almost 2 months, I finally had the chance to take part into a such exciting physics course. In the past, I only learnt some theoretical physics in my school in China. But i really long to have chance to use the advanced facilities like 3D printers and laser cutters to do project in practice.

Today was absolutely a relaxing day. We didn’t need to do any projects. All the things we did were just learning about the safety requirements, visiting the lab, introducing ourselves and setting up our own website, which is really novel for me since I never imagine that I could have my own website in one day.

Although it was my first time to starting my own web, it’s easier than I thought. I just needed to follow the instructions and click some buttons. Even so, I still be proud of myself since I finished sucesfully independently and even helped the student sitting next to me.

Follow my steps, I'll show you the classroom and the lab.

I.Facilities that I saw in the lab today:

3D Printer

Board Traces

CNC Machining

Board Interior

Laser Cutter

Girl in a jacket

II.Our classroom in Science Center 102

If you want to know more about my course, click the link! A link to our course website

Lab Time, June 26

The First Project about Circuit

This is the first lab time during the courses. As a curious students, I have longed for it for a long time. Before the lab time, I was a little nervous but excited since I was going to finish the amazing project that I haven’t done in the past. Bue just the unknown things made this attractive. Let’s start with the easiest task-making a bulb shine.

Board Traces

After successfully making a rea bulb shine, I decided to added another green bulb in series. And in this series, there was a button which was below my finger since I was pressing it to connect the whole series. It’s working like a switch. If I press it, both the bulb will shine. Otherwise, they have no light.

Board Interior

Later, I made a really big progress. I changed the circuit in series to circuit in parallel and added the third yellow bulb. At the same time, I removed the button since I was going to control these bulbs by programming. As you see, it’s a easy program called blink. They shined for 1 second and thaen stopped working for 1 second.

At last, I finally finished my project. As I proposed, I gonna make a traffic light. As a result, I needed to let them shine at different times for various time. Because of the alternating, I needed to power them by different power supply. So accuatlly there are three circuit in a protoboard in this vedio. After programming, I succeeded to finishing my project today.

If you want to do the same thing, build a circuit and download the LINK! Click to download my Blink program

Summary:

In the class, the professor and the assistant showed us what this course is and what we gonna do in the next seven weeks. At the same time, they leaded us to visit lab and know the positions of all kinds of materials that we would use in the lab time and final project. I was becoming more and more excited about this course since I really felt like the lab.

In the lab time, I succeeded finishing my subject of a traffic light step by step. That’s my first subject done by myself in my physics career in the lab. I was really excited and proud. And I really expect the next lab time.