(In our last report, Daniel Angerhausen, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Jon Morse, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor of physics, was poised to fulfill a longtime dream and fly about NASA’s flying observatory, SOFIA. Alas, the path to science is often paved with setbacks and … well, we’ll let him tell you about it himself.)

Recently I wrote about my trip to California to make a long-cherished dream come true by flying aboard the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), NASA’s Boeing 747-SP with equipped with a 2.5 meter-wide telescope. Today I have to report that it did not work out for me. And a tiny $12 electrical spare part bears the blame.

But let me start from the beginning. A few weeks ago, I was offered a chance to fulfill one of my biggest dreams and fly aboard SOFIA, as part of its first observations of extrasolar planets. The offer came with very short notice and, to make it work, I would have to interrupt a vacation I had planned with my family in Germany and fly from Germany to California to make the date. But the opportunity was too big to pass up and I scrambled to make the necessary preparations for a Thursday, May 2 flight.

Once I had booked my flights, got my NASA badge, clearance to enter the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, medical clearance to fly with SOFIA, and an appointment for flight training just a day before the flight date, I could not imagine much that could stand in my way.

The first bad news came in London, as I was waiting for my connecting flight to Los Angeles: an email announced that the previous night’s flight — the flight that would be used to calibrate the instruments I wanted to use during my flight — had been cancelled for mechanical reasons. However, the rest of the email was more reassuring. It sounded as if they could fix the problem in time for my flight.

On  Wednesday May 1, after a 12-hour transatlantic flight and a one-hour drive from the airport, I arrived at the SOFIA hangar, adjacent labs and offices. I walked in looking to find some of my old colleagues, telescope, and flight engineers that I knew from my time at the German SOFIA Institute. I finally found all of them gathered around a small grey box in one of the labs in the basement. One of my old colleagues approached me and, before even saying “hello” he said “it does not look good for your flight tomorrow. Unofficially the flight is already cancelled”.

An official email cancelling the May 2 flight just came in 10 minutes later. The culprit: a burned-out relay caused a power failure to the system that lubricates the telescope rotation mechanism.

I was devastated but still had a little hope because there was a small chance that I could get on another flight, which was scheduled for Monday May 6, and I spent the rest of the day prepping for the backup flight by meeting with the flight and telescope engineers, astronomers, and instrument scientists slated for that flight.

The next day, instead of flying, we ran some tests of the instruments on board of SOFIA in the hangar. Around noon I had my flight training. I spent about an hour learning about security features and emergency procedures on SOFIA. It was basically a long version of the demonstration that flight attendants do on commercial flights. Since we were supposed to fly mostly on the mainland or close to the Pacific Coast, the teacher told us that he skipped the videos on “how to survive on a remote island” and “how to build an igloo,” required viewing for flights over Alaska or the southern Pacific.

At the end of the day the chance of the backup flight going forward was about “50/50” according to one of the engineers. But even though I slept with fingers crossed, the final blow came the next morning: although they were able to get all required spare parts (from Ebay), security protocols required tests and procedures that they were not able to fulfill in time.

Of course, I am very disappointed. But this is something we have to get used to in science and in particular in astronomy: experiments fail, results are inconclusive or the one night that you have on a telescope turns up cloudy. For me this means that I have to hope for the next opportunity in fall, and submit new observing proposals for the next call.

This was my 5th “date” with SOFIA on the ground and I am sure that one day I will also get one night with her in the air.

Daniel Angerhausen with SOFIA

(Later this week, Daniel Angerhausen, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Jon Morse, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor of physics and associate vice president for research for physical sciences and engineering, will be flying aboard the airborne telescope SOFIA. Angerhausen, a native of Uerdingen, Germany [about 30 minutes from Cologne], sent us this excellent post about the flight and his research. Enjoy!)

My name is Daniel Angerhausen, I’m a postdoc in the Department of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy at RPI, and on Thursday I will fulfill one of my biggest dreams: I will be on board the flying observatory SOFIA to observe a planet in a another solar system.

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy  (SOFIA), a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR),  is basically a 2.5 meter-wide telescope aboard a Boeing 747-SP airplane (you can see it in action in this video). If you ever looked out of a plane window,  you may have noticed that you are most of the time above the clouds and, in short, that is the reason SOFIA was built: flying at altitudes of about  41,000 feet enables the instruments  on SOFIA to collect light that is absorbed by the atmosphere before reaching telescopes on the ground and even on high mountains.

I did my diploma studies at the University of Cologne, where the Astronomy Department was building parts of an instrument for SOFIA. From the first time I heard of SOFIA I was fascinated by the combination of astronomical science and airborne engineering, and SOFIA actually was one of the reasons I choose astrophysics as my major. Ten years ago a German magazine interviewed me, and the last thing I said in the article was (translated): “My institute helps building a flying observatory and one of my biggest dreams would be to fly with SOFIA one day.”

After my time in Cologne I started my doctoral studies at Caltech/NASA-JPL and also the German SOFIA Institute, specializing on the characterization of so called extrasolar planets, planets that orbit stars outside of our solar system.  Some of these exoplanets transit (pass) in front of their host star,  similar to the Venus transit of the Sun that we were able to observe last summer. During this transit the star’s light is blocked by the planet and a tiny decrease in the brightness of the star is observable (here’s a cool video explaining how it works). From these brightness variations, or light-curves as we call them, we can find out many characteristics of these planets. In our observation we are trying to detect signatures of water in the planetary atmosphere of an exoplanet called HD189733b. We need SOFIA flying up in the stratosphere for these observations because the air humidity alone would blocks these water signatures from observation lower in the Earth atmosphere.

For my doctoral thesis, I found out that these observations are possible with SOFIA and in early 2012 NASA issued the first call for SOFIA proposals (astronomers prepare a ”proposal” by way of applying for time to use a particular observatory). The proposal that I worked on with colleagues from NASA Goddard space flight center was awarded the observation time on SOFIA. Unfortunately (but lucky for me), due to sequestration, these NASA colleagues were not able to go on the flight. Because they weren’t able to go, I was offered the super exciting opportunity to fly just a week ago.

I did not hesitate a second to accept: I’ve visited SOFIA a couple of times in the hangar but finally flying through the stratosphere on a scientific plane with a huge NASA logo on its side, exploring alien planets is probably the closet I will get to being an astronaut in my life – a Stratospheronaut  … maybe.

Like I said, I’ll be flying Thursday, May 2 (and you can follow my flight on this flight tracking page). Keep your fingers crossed for my observations – I will keep you posted on the flight itself next week and the results in some month.

(Rensselaer Architecture student Tyler Hopf wrote this post about a team of Rensselaer students who are putting their skills and talents to a good cause in the Albany round of the nationwide CANstruction fundraising event.)

My name is Tyler Hopf and I am the captain of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute CANstruction team.  We are the only student team competing in a regional design competition against other professional architecture and engineering firms. We are competing with one another through our designs, but in the end, all of our efforts go towards helping the hungry.

Each year we raise money to purchase canned food from Price Chopper and design something crazy to build with them.  After we build our CANstructure, it is exhibited in the New York State Museum for two weeks and then after it is taken down, all of the canned food is donated directly to the Food Pantries for the Capital Region.

Last year was our team’s first year participating.  We raised about $2,000 and donated about 1,600 cans.  This year we have raised over $4,000 and are getting ready to use 3,000 cans in our CANstructure! Our team is growing – we have students from every year participating, we have increased our donor network and our design is far more ambitious.  This is my last year and I am so proud of our team and what we have accomplished.

This theme of the Captial Region CANstruction 2013 is “CAN you imagine…” and our spin on is a “Wizard of Oz” theme.  We have a swirling tornado to build, a twisting yellow brick road to lay, and a grand Emerald City and a flowing field of poppies to build.  The image at the top of this post is a computer model of our ambitious design.

Our CANstructure will be displayed in the New York State Museum for two weeks from March 28 to April 10.

Check out our alumni giving page to see last years project and to help us out by donating to our cause!  We could really use the help!

Look out Dorothy, we’re not in CANsas anymore!

(In the wake of this morning’s headlines about a meteorite blast in Russia, the Institute’s own Laurie Leshin, dean of the School of Science and space science rock star, wrote this  post for The Approach. Enjoy!)

This morning people in Russia got a loud reminder that Earth isn’t really a blue marble floating peacefully in space. A meteor, about the size of a bus, slammed into our atmosphere going over 30,000 miles per hour. This caused very loud sonic booms which damaged buildings and injured about 1,000 people near the city of Chelyabinsk. Luckily, there weren’t any deaths, and damaged buildings can be repaired. But this cosmic intruder reminds us that in fact we live in solar system filled with space debris—Earth collects 40,000 tons of it EVERY YEAR. Most of it looks the above picture.

The image is of a small dust particle (about 10 microns across, or one-tenth the width of a human hair) that is slowed down in the upper atmosphere and harmlessly floats to Earth. Walk to your car, and you’ll step on lots of them…

But there are bigger things out there, too. We need to find them and then figure out how to deflect them or change their course, before a large one hits Earth. Most people have seen the really entertaining movie Armageddon, starring Bruce Willis as a driller who saves the earth from an asteroid “the size of Texas.” Well, the truth is that it doesn’t have to be the size of Texas to be a global killer. (In fact, the largest known asteroid is only about one-third the size of Texas…Hollywood!) The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was, in fact, only about the size of our own city of Troy. And there are lots of those. Nervous yet? Me too. How about putting some of our science and engineering talents to work figuring out how to deflect one? In the meantime, remember, we live on a space rock. And sometimes, we interact with other space rocks.

By the way, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that space rocks are good for more than scaring us. They are a boon to science. Meteorites (and I bet they’ll find some from the event of this morning) tell us about the very birth of our solar system. Most are 4.6 billion years old, and were the very first solids to form in our solar system. They bore witness to the birth of the planets and may have delivered the raw ingredients for life to the early Earth.

(Click here, here, and here to read more and see a video about Dean Leshin’s space research and work as part of the Mars rover Curiosity team.)

(High school senior Samantha Scibelli – named yesterday as one of 40 finalists in the prestigious pre-college Intel Science Talent Search 2013 – wrote this excellent post for The Approach, to tell us about her research  with Professor Heidi Newberg. Enjoy!)

My name is Samantha Scibelli, I am currently finishing up my senior year at Burnt Hills–Ballston Lake High School. I have always had a love for science, starting from the time I was young, polishing rocks in my rock tumbler and analyzing fingerprints with my forensics kit. My passion for science escalated the summer before my sophomore year. That summer I attended a career exploration program at Cornell University where I took a workshop on astronomy. Immediately I fell in love with the field and the exciting research it was producing. I was fascinated by dark matter, exoplanets, parallel universes, and all of the mysteries in the farthest depths of our universe.

That same year I was accepted into my school’s science research program. This program is designed to have students work with professional mentors on cutting-edge research for three years starting their sophomore year. I was determined to work in astronomy research. So I got busy trying to find a mentor.

That fall I spent hours reading professional papers on various types of astronomy research. I scrolled through the internet searching for possible mentors at various college campuses. Incredibly, my science research teacher had arranged for me to meet with Professor Heidi Jo Newberg of RPI. I was thrilled! I had read dozens of her papers on topics such as tidal streams, dwarf galaxies, and dark matter. Shortly after we met I joined the research group and delved into a project of my own.

The research I do with Professor Newberg involves classifying blue stars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Stars are classed based on their temperature and luminosity, with blue stars being of the very hot and luminous variety. They are unique to study because of their rarity. Blue stars burn their fuel faster compared to other cooler stars, therefore they die faster. An accurate classification of stars, specifically rare blue stars, is important when astronomers want to gain information about stellar populations and describe the structure of our galaxy.

The SDSS provides publically accessible data of objects in one-fourth of the entire sky. The SDSS has been a part of numerous discoveries, including the discovery of the most distant quasars and of various substructures in the outer Milky Way. Visually, errors within the computer generated spectral template classification system have been noticed. It’s important to minimize these errors so future research can become more accurate.

My research involved looking by eye through the spectra of over 12,000 blue stars. I found that 10 percent of these stars were misclassified by the SDSS. I then placed these misclassified stars into 11 new classes. Some of these classes include binary stars, featureless stars, cataclysmic variable stars, DB white dwarfs, and unknown blue stars. I found that the spectral classification problems within the SDSS can be accounted for the lack of templates for stellar objects. There are 42 templates with only 8 templates for hot blue stars. I suggest that additional templates be added into the SDSS to account for rarer types of blue stars.

Much of the research done with SDSS is on extragalactic objects, such as galaxies and quasars. But as research on stellar spectra from the SDSS data becomes more common, errors with the classification should be minimized. The work I’ve done will hopefully draw attention to the classification problems and create accurate data results in the future so astronomers can learn about the structure of our galaxy and universe as a whole.

Working with Professor Newberg on this project has been an incredible experience. I have been fortunate enough to present my findings at various professional conferences and compete in local science fairs. Being a part of this research and being able to collaborate with professional scientists has been life changing. Scientific research has given me the ability to learn beyond the confines of a classroom. I have had the opportunity to ask questions and find my own answers. I look forward to a long and prosperous future in research, and I hope I can inspire other young students interested in math and science to follow in my footsteps.

(Senior Hannah Fix wrote this excellent post for The Approach to tell us about her educational outreach work with Professor Patrick Underhill. Enjoy!)

My name is Hannah Fix, I am a  senior undergraduate studying aeronautical and mechanical Engineering. I work with Professor Patrick Underhill on the “Fluid Dynamics Demo Kit: Fluid Physics on the Road” project, which is funded through the American Physical Society Division of Fluid Dynamics.

The Fluid Dynamics Demo Kit is an educational outreach project designing kits that contain experiments to teach students basic fluid and flow concepts. The aim of the project is to use exciting experiments aimed at high school students to teach them practical applications of the concepts they learn in the classroom. These experiments include a water gun, a siphon, Heron’s fountain, and a viscous drag experiment. There is a list of topics covered for each experiment and the assumption is that the topics will have previously been covered in class.

Heron's Fountain

Along with materials for the experiment, each kit includes the information for the teachers and worksheets for the students. There is a PowerPoint presentation which goes along with the experiment, walking through the set-up for the experiment, as well as the procedure, and the calculations that give a basic explanation of all the topics covered. The worksheets are designed to help the high school students walk through the various calculations to get theoretical results, compare them to the experimental results, and explain why they differ. For each experiment a sample worksheet is done with all the calculations written out to provide the teachers with extra guidance.

The supplies needed for each experiment are listed on both the PowerPoint slides and the worksheets. Each kit contains the basic components needed to complete every one of the experiments—beakers, scales, water, and other common laboratory equipment and supplies are assumed to be available to the students and will not be included in the kits. The experiments in all four kits are use parts that are cheap and easy to find, so even if something is broken or lost it can easily be replaced.

In the  water gun experiment, the students choose a target, calculate the number of times they have to pump the water gun, fire the water gun, and then see how close they were to hitting the target. The idea behind the water gun is that by pumping it and adding air, the water in the tank becomes pressurized thus causing it to exit the gun at a faster rate of speed and to go a farther distance. The students have to take measurements of the gun’s performance and calculate in advance the number of times they should have to pump it, using principles including ballistics, conservation of energy, Bernoulli, ideal gas law, conservation of mass, and generation of entropy. Then, using the results from the first test shot, the students calculate the coefficient of friction, recalculate the number of pumps, and fire again hopefully getting closer to the target with friction taken into account.

A siphon is a tube that pumps water up and out of one bucket and down to a bucket at lower lever. Atmospheric pressure is used to pump the water up the tube and then the water flows down into the lower bucket because it has less potential energy. The lab covers principles including Bernoulli, conservation of mass, conservation of energy, and viscous drag. The students are asked to calculate the theoretical time it takes to fill the lower bucket a certain amount and then compare it to experimental results. This lab also then has the students use those results to calculate the frictional losses.

Heron’s fountain, in which water runs up from the bottom tank and out through a tube in the top tank with no pumps, seems impossible. But it is just a matter of pressures pushing the water up and out. To prime the fountain,  water is added to the bottom tank and then the fountain is flipped upside down and water from the bottom tank fills the middle tank pressurizing the middle tank. The high pressure of the middle tank causes the water to flow up and out of the top of the fountain. Over time all the water from the middle tank flows up and out of the top of the fountain and the fountain stops until it is re-primed. The students calculate the time it takes for the fountain to stop running and compare it to the actual time.

The viscous drag experiment involves dropping various size and weight glass spheres in corn syrup and measuring the amount of time it takes for them to fall a certain distance. The students also heat and cool the corn syrup, to see if its viscosity changes at different temperatures. The drag laboratory covers principles including force balance, gravity, viscous drag, and buoyancy.

Our hope is to soon have these four experiments complete, and for the kits ready to be sent out to a few teachers who will test them out and give us feedback. We also hope to add more experiments to the kits, including one that covers surface tension. The education outreach project will help high school students learn to apply fluid concepts to real-world examples, and to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for theory they learn in lectures.

I’m Michelle Riedman, a civil engineering (structures) graduate student working with Professor Christopher Letchford and Professor Michael O’Rourke. We are currently conducting a research project for the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) entitled “Determining the Remaining Fatigue Life of In-Situ Mast-Arm Traffic Signal Supports.” Harry White is the NYSDOT project manager while my two advisors are co-principle investigators. Undergraduate electrical engineering student, Vinh Nguyen, is also working on the project as part of RPI’s Undergraduate Research Program.

The project studies wind-induced vibrations of long cantilevered mast arm traffic signal structures. When the wind flows past the mast arm of the structure, low-pressure vortices are shed on alternating sides of the arm causing the mast arm to vibrate in a cross-wind or vertical response, as shown below.

If the frequency at which the vortices are shed (which is a function of both the wind speed as well as the diameter of the mast arm) matches the natural frequency of the structure, then vibrations with high amplitudes can occur. These vibrations cause structural stresses and strains to occur in a cyclical fashion which can lead to fatigue of the structure, and in some cases full collapse.

To study these wind induced vibrations, we are currently conducting a full scale experiment on a 25 meter cantilevered traffic structure in Malta, NY. An ultrasonic anemometer and two 3-component accelerometers were installed on the structure with the help of Jon LaPointe from the civil engineering department and data is currently being recorded at intervals of 23Hz through a data acquisition system. A picture of the traffic structure along with several pictures from the installation of our equipment is shown below.

While installing the equipment, pluck tests were conducted in order to determine the dynamic properties of the structure. To conduct these pluck tests, the free end of the mast arm was manually excited by a person from the research team with access via a boom lift and then let go so that the structure entered into free vibration. Using both the time history of the data collected during these tests and the corresponding Fourier transform, the natural frequencies and damping ratios were determined for both the in plane and out of plane directions.

These results compared well with the finite element model that had been developed prior to the full scale tests. A screen-shot of the finite element model in its first mode of vibration is shown below.

The natural frequency of the structure was calculated to be 0.52 Hz for the first mode of vibration. Knowing the diameter of this particular mast arm, it has been calculated that vortices should be shed at this same frequency when the wind speed is around 6 m/s or about 13 mph. In order to determine how frequently this wind speed of interest should occur, wind climate data for the Albany, N.Y. area was obtained from the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and a wind rose was constructed. A wind rose shows the frequency at which wind blows from a particular direction at a particular speed. The angle of attack of the wind relative to the mast arm is of interest as well since the vibrations are most severe when the wind hits near perpendicular to the mast arm’s longitudinal direction. When overlayed on a site map, the wind rose for the Albany, NY area shows that the majority of winds in the area should hit the arm in a near perpendicular fashion, which is good news for our research project, but bad news for the life of the structure.

The end goal of the project is to use the data collected through the full scale experiment, the finite element computer model, as well as the general climate data from the NCDC for various locations in New York state to come up with a general methodology that the DOT can use to assess the remaining fatigue life of these types of structures throughout the state.

In the article in which he is quoted, Napolitano helped explain the importance of the Higgs boson to Capital Region readers.

Professor Napolitano is a vocal proponent of the importance of research in pure science, such as the research that has lead to the remarkable discovery of the Higgs. He has given a great deal of thought to the work done at institutions such as CERN—home of the Large Hadron Collider that smashed protons to create the Higgs—and at Rensselaer. He’s even spoken about the subject in an address he gave to the Rensselaer Phalanx Honor Society.

I asked him to share his thoughts with us here on The Approach. Here’s what he had to say:

When I describe my research (in so-called high energy elementary particle physics) I am frequently asked “So, what is it good for?”

Such is the lot in life for those of us in the “pure sciences” and, I suspect, to many in the arts and humanities. Urban legends provide humorous retorts: Benjamin Franklin purportedly responded “What use is a newborn baby?” while Michael Faraday supposedly answered his Prime Minister “I cannot say what use they may be, but I can confidently predict that one day you will be able to tax them.” Let me take a moment to try and come up with a more serious answer.

To me, mankind lives in a bubble. We cannot see outside the bubble, but we know there is more out there. Inside this bubble, there exists joy and also problems that need to be solved. Also inside the bubble are all of the tools we have at our disposal for solving these problems. Learning how to use this tools and to modify them is the work of the engineer and applied scientist.

However, more tools lie outside the bubble. (Likely there are more problems, too, but let’s not worry about them for now.) Those of us in the “pure” arts and sciences, we push on the bubble, expanding it so that we gather more tools. Nobody knows for sure which direction is the right one, to find the tools for any one particular problem, so we push on the bubble in all directions that we can. Steadily, we learn new things, build new tools, and help mankind solve more of its problems.

Our universities are the “bubble expanding factories,” especially places like Rensselaer. We teach students how to think outside the bubble, how to gather new facts and look in new places. Establishing the balance between “pure” and “applied” research is much easier at universities than it is at private profit-oriented companies and corporations. Indeed, our privilege to be at a place such as Rensselaer comes with significant responsibilities for the eventual betterment of our planet.

I enjoyed Professor Napolitano’s perspective. I hope you did too.

(Civil Engineering senior Elizabeth Wroe wrote this excellent post for The Approach. It’s about an engineering competition last month in Oakland, Calif., where she and her teammates won second place. Enjoy!)

On March 26, a group of RPI students placed second in the annual Geo-Institutes GeoWall competition. The four students on the build team were Margaret Exton, Russell Jones, Panagiota Kokkali, and Leonard Lustrino.

As champions of last year’s competition, the RPI team fought hard to keep their title. Unfortunately, in classic bottom-of-the-ninth style drama, the final competing team managed to build a strong stable wall and steal away the prize.

The GeoWall competition is a contest to determine which team can build a retaining wall out of poster board and Kraft paper using the least amount of material. Between the final weight of the Kraft paper used, a report score, and any deductions that may have been incurred due to rule violation, each team receives a total score. If the wall fails under the loading, the team is disqualified. RPI came in second with a total of 159.2 points. Surrounding Rensselaer’s second place finish were CalPoly Pomona in first place with 182.5 points and CalPoly San Luis Obispo in third with 152.5 points.

The RPI team, which also includes alternates Derek Lousch, Jessica Stratton, Christopher Snyder, and Elizabeth Wroe, had been working on the final wall design long before their trip to Oakland. Over the course of sixth months, the team tested paper and soil parameters and built many different wall designs.

Beyond basic tensile tests of the paper, and shear tests for the soil, the team went so far as to establish their own pullout test for the paper strips. This test helped establish whether the strips were breaking under the load conditions or simply “pulling-out” of the soil due to insufficient friction between the sand and the paper. While pullout tests do already exist, the team had to modify the original testing materials to correctly represent the unique conditions of the paper retaining wall.

In addition to having a strong design and low paper weight, it is very important to construct and install the wall under the time limit set by the competition. After eventually deciding on a design and submitting the report, the RPI GeoWall team spent many weeks practicing to build the wall within the set time limits. Averaging at around one wall per week, sixteen separate retaining walls were built and tested to help calibrate team members to the competition standards.

The competition featured four heats based upon weight of the paper reinforcement. Having a relatively above-average paper weight, RPI competed in the second heat along with four other schools. Disqualifications were common, as a team’s wall had to stay intact under various loading conditions for a length of time. Only six teams were given a score.

After RPI’s wall held, the team had to wait anxiously for the following ten school’s designs to fail. Because all following teams had less design weight, they had a greater chance of receiving a higher score. Fortunately, for the RPI team, deductions were as common as failures. For example, each team was responsible for building and bringing their own box and any deviations from the specifications given in the rules were eligible for deductions. RPI’s relatively high report score and lack of deductions gave them a high lead early in the competition.

The competition was held in Oakland, Calif. this year at Geo-Institute’s annual GeoCongress conference. Along with presentations and exhibits, the gathering also featured two separate competitions as part of the GeoChallenge: the GeoPoster, a contest between research posters; and GeoPredictions, a contest where each team of students is presented with a real-world civil engineering problem and is asked to present the most reasonable geotechnical engineering solution. Next year’s GeoChallenge will be held in San Diego.

(Professor and friend of The Approach Tarek Abdoun is the faculty adviser of the Rensselaer GeoChallenge Team. For more on the team, click here and here.)

(Alex Giordano is a senior mechanical engineering major and shop manager for the Rensselaer Formula SAE student team. He wrote this excellent post for The Approach to talk about the yesterday’s event where the club unveiled its 2012 race car, which you can see above and below. Every year the club builds a new car from scratch and races it against cars created by other universities—pretty cool!)

The 2012 Roll Out event was a great success this year as faculty, sponsors, family, and friends gathered to witness the unveiling of our competition racecar. “R12,” as we call it, features several major improvements from last year’s car. To start, the front and rear suspension geometry has been completely redesigned with a focus on decreasing body roll and lowering the center of gravity of each suspension component. Front and rear anti-roll bars have been implemented as well as a transition to the use of pull rods in the rear suspension. Six chassis members were removed after the results from physical testing deemed them unnecessary in this year’s design. “R12” will also feature electronic shifting actuated by paddles on our suede-wrapped steering wheel. The engine package will include an upgraded engine control unit (ECU) as well significantly more hours of dyno-tuning than our previous years’ race car.

Completing the car for our Roll Out was challenge as always, and team members logged more than 1500 shop hours in the last three weeks. The team continues to grow in size and effectiveness as students become more aware of FSAE around campus. A focus on recruiting during the fall semester yielded a strong new influx of bright motivated students to take the baton and carry the team into next year. I’m very proud to be a member of the Rensselaer Formula SAE Race Team, and as a senior club member graduating in May I look forward to competing for the final time at Michigan International Speedway next month. I am very happy to say the team is alive and well, the car will certainly improve dramatically over the next few years as some very creative and motivated students move into leadership.

For further reading about the Rensselaer FSAE club, click here and here.