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Mudit’s Status Report for February 18

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.).

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Team Status Report for February 11

Beyond engineering: The broader considerations of The Well of Maxwell

Our project includes considerations for education, safety, and socioeconomic inequalities. Since our goal is to teach students electromagnetism and inspire them to explore the field further, we want the educational modules to be accurate, authoritative, and effective. Moreover, we want learning to occur in a safe environment, so our system must be robust and not harm the user. Lastly, we want to provide a way for students who don’t have the resources to experiment with E&M to learn by doing.

Risks and Risk Management

One of the most significant risks would be our ability to convert the hardware stimuli (voltage source polarity, direction of induced current and magnitude of induced voltage) to digital data that will be taken in by our Web Application. This is the major connection between the hardware and software aspects of our project. This is the main blocker for our project progress, since the components we use to build the experiments will change depending on how we digitize the hardware data. As a contingency, we could use a digital multimeter with a built-in Web Interface or we could attempt using ADALM and Scopy, though these methods would be more ‘clunky’.

Changes

The design of the system has not been changed since last week.

Progress

We made a rough block diagram with regards to the design of our system and we intend to use it to guide us throughout our project.

We also made a wireframe specifically for the web application and built the skeleton for the web application, and partially implemented OAuth admin logins, welcome page, and basic home page. 

According to our current schedule, we should be finalizing the hardware to digital data conversion mechanism within the next two weeks, while starting on a rough design of our two experiments such that we can finalize the values of the circuit components we need. Additionally, the rough build for the web app without any integrated components should be finished within the next two to three weeks. That will allow us to purchase components within 2-3 weeks for the experiment setup.

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Mudit’s Status Report for February 11

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.

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Aaron’s Status Report for February 11

This week, I worked on design and started implementation of the web application. Before any programming, I constructed a wireframe for how the HTML pages would be set up and how the content would be displayed: 

Then, I built the main foundations for the Django web app; I set up a local development folder (which I plan to upload to GitHub next week), and began a Django project. I added a few dummy HTML files based on my wire frame. I wrote a basic HTML file for base.html, which all other html files except for welcome.html will extend. I added URL connections for each web page. Additionally, I started brainstorming about what Models I would need to implement all the capabilities, initialized the SQLite database, and wrote a starter file for views.py. After I made sure the basic web pages were displaying and a user could navigate between “Welcome” and “Home”, I started looking into OAuth. I set up a google project and gained a secure key for OAuth for our project, and migrated OAuth into the project. For now, after clicking “Login as Admin”, it will ask the user to log in with a google account using OAuth. I have not yet implemented which google accounts will be recognized as admins yet, or what to do if a non-admin unsuccessfully tries to log in.  Next week, I plan to implement admin recognition, and build a few basic navigations for the educational modules and figure out how I want information on the page to be displayed and updated easily. I also want to set up the pages for each experiment, and add some educational information and touch up the front-end aspects of the web pages. I believe that I am on track, as I plan to finish the non-integration aspects of the web application within the next two weeks, and I got a good start on the foundations of the web application this week.

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Shizhen’s Status Report for February 11

At the beginning of the week, I mainly worked on finalizing the project proposal slides, and practicing the presentation. Overall, I was satisfied with my presentation, as it was interactive, logical and cohesive. However, to improve my presentation skills in the future, I should be calmer and speak more slowly to be more clear and articulate.

After giving the presentation, I reviewed the relevant electromagnetism concepts, such as Faraday’s law and the Lorentz force law, and started thinking about what specific experiment we can implement to demonstrate Faraday’s law clearly. I came to the conclusion that creating a homopolar generator (or Faraday’s disc)  may be a feasible option because:

1. the device should not be too complicated to build, but shows the principles of Faraday’s law well;
2. it is the the first electromagnetic generator, and including a section about its history may draw the attention of students who are more humanities-inclined.

However, it may be a little difficult to explain to students how the magnetic field varies and induces an electromotive force since the motion is circular, not linear.

A Faraday disk generator
Source: Émile Alglave, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Lastly, I tinkered with the WordPress website, and customized it such that it meets all the requirements and everyone is pleased with the design. My progress appears to be on schedule.

Next week, I hope to develop the hardware design for the Faraday’s disc and create a bill of materials, in preparation for the Design Review in two weeks’ time.