Author: muditm

This week I focused mostly on the design review report and ordering equipment for the ampere-maxwell experiment. For the report, I worked on the ampere-maxwell experiment section in the Design trade studies and system implementation section, as well as the Test, Verification and validation section and the Project Management section. For the project management section, it was helpful to create the bill of materials table that helped us to define our expenditure and budget.

Our progress is on schedule as we have received the materials we ordered. In the next week, I will implement the Ampere-Maxwell Experiment with the materials I have received. This will be a mockup of the circuit (actual equipment but not soldered or installed fully for presentation purposes).

For this week, I worked on parts of the Design review report, factoring in the feedback given from the design review presentation.

I also made a mockup of the Ampere-Maxwell Experiment to ensure that it would work with the actual components we purchase. This mockup experiment was done with readily available materials in TechSpark, using a 9 volt alkaline battery, a 9V to 5V Power Supply converter, a spool of wire, a 1KOhm resistor and a breadboard. A voltmeter was connected across the resistor to ensure that the resistor was consuming most of the voltage rather than the coil of wire (for safety considerations and to ensure the coil of wire can last over long periods or repeated reuses). I used my phone’s compass to check if the deflection was working as expected, since the phone uses its magnetometers to orient the compass as well, similar to an actual compass. The deflection noted was significant, moving the needle from 298 degrees North-west to 160 degrees South. Since the mock up of the experiment is working, I will now purchase the actual parts that will be used to build the actual experiment.

My progress is on schedule as I have designed the mockup of the experiment and tested it to make sure it is working. In the next week, I will put in the order for the materials together with Shizhen’s equipment for the Faraday Experiment so that we can streamline our component/circuit design choices such that our experiments look consistent with another aesthetically, rather than appearing as 2 separately designed parts of the booth. While waiting for the component delivery, I will work with Shizhen to test the delivered Arduino chip with the mockup experiment. The aim will be to ensure the Arduino can detect the voltage polarity of the Ampere Maxwell experiment, and can send this data to a MySQL database or through a wired connection to a laptop.

This week I personally worked on defining the Ampere-Maxwell Experiment that will be housed in our booth. I had an idea of what the experiment required: a solenoid with current flowing through it and a way to depict the magnetic field produced. I did some research and read about how the first time a magnetic field was observed from a current was when a compass was coincidentally placed near the wire. I decided to incorporate this fact in the experiment and then had to figure out how to alternate the polarity of the voltage source. This lead me to reading about Single Pull Double Throw (SPDT) switches that could alternate the connection of the solenoid between two oppositely oriented batteries. I designed the Circuit Schematic on an Online simulator, as shown below.

For this section of the work, I relied on my knowledge from the following ECE Courses: 18-220 (in making Circuits and simulating them) and 18-300 (to understand the Electromagnetic theory behind the Ampere Maxwell Experiment).

As for the blocker from the previous week (bridging the experiment hardware to our web app software), I researched on voltmeters that could direct our variables to a MySQL server that could be accessed by the web app. I decided to streamline the two experiments by using voltmeter readings in both to affect the animation in our web app.

Furthermore, I worked on parts of the design review presentation, specifically in designing the Testing and Validation requirements, the Ampere-Maxwell schematic and the Gantt Chart for the project management section.

I believe my progress is good, according to the schedule we have in our Gantt Chart. In the Next week, I plan to start building a mock up of the Ampere Maxwell Experiment with the components I already have, and start putting in orders for the other circuit components I will require (SPDT switches, Compass, etc.).

This week I personally worked on defining the scope of the project, the testing criteria, as well as the MVP definition of the project. I discussed these details with my team members before and after to ensure that we all had the same idea and were on the right track. I also identified the hardware components that would be required for the two experiments we intend to place in the well. I then defined the physical hardware data points that we would need to digitize for the web application (Voltage source polarity for the Ampere-Maxwell Experiment) (Direction of induced current and magnitude of induced voltage reading for Faraday Experiment). I also contributed to the development of the project proposal slides and building it our schedule and division of tasks on the Gantt Chart. I believe I am on schedule, having defined the requirements for this project accurately. I believe as a team we all have a very specific idea of what we want to achieve in the final product. For the next week, I hope to solve the blocker that we currently have: figuring out how to digitize the physical hardware data points for use in our web application. We cannot really purchase specific components until we have an idea of how to digitize those readings. My focus will be on the Ampere-Maxwell Experiment and identifying all the circuit components required to build this experiment.