Intellectra is a series of puzzles that tests an individual's aptitude for specific types of learning. It is designed to be a fun and interesting way for individuals to learn about their learning patterns. The mission statement is as follows: Our mission is to provide a valuable experience for the everyday consumer that both tests personal attributes, like logic or memory, and is also legitimately fun. We want our product to be a hands-on, exciting puzzle box experience that anybody can use. Our goal is to become a leading brand of puzzle boxes and be able to provide fun, educational experiences to everyone. We also would like to serve schools by providing learning experiences all over the world at an affordable price.

This project involved testing and characterization on a shock loaded sample with a single engineered defect to study the effect of inclusions in engineering alloys. The sample was a single crystal copper with an embedded tungsten wire. Hardness testing and EBSD analysis were performed as independent methods of characterizing the effect of a single defect on the adjacent material after a dynamic test. The objective was to define a region of the engineered defect's influence and quantify its effect for improved damage models and material design. EBSD images and hardness results complemented each other, showing evidence of plastic deformation and work hardening in the region around the tungsten wire that decreased moving radially further from it.

In this thesis, we identify and analyze several chosen themes of Asian American identity that we feel are touched on in interesting ways within the body of films and media we’ve chosen to focus on. We do not argue that these themes are the most important for all Asian Americans, but we do believe that these themes reflect some of the commonly discussed questions of Asian American identity, particularly within the mainstream middle class. In one vein, these themes underline desires and longing present within Asian America and parallel competing notions of exclusion and integration: dreams of success, belonging, and connection.

Our Idea: As a team of engineers, two in the engineering field and one in computer science and software development, we wanted to find a way to put these skills to use in our company. As we did not have a revolutionary idea to build our own product, we wanted to base our company on the assumption that people have great ideas and lack the ability to execute on these ideas. Our mission is to enable these people and companies to make their ideas a reality, and allow them to go to market with a clean and user friendly product. We are using our skills and experience in hardware and device prototyping and testing, as well as software design and development to make this happen. Implementation: To this point, we have been working with a client building a human diagnostic and enhancement AI device. We have been consulting on mostly the design and creation of their first proof of concept, working on hardware and sensor interaction as well as developing the software allowing their platform to come to life. We have been working closely with the leaders of the company, who have the ideas and business knowledge, while we focus on the technology side. As for the scalability and market potential of our business, we believe that the potential market is not the limiting factor. Instead, the limiting factor to the growth of our business is the time we have to devote. We are currently only working with one client, and not looking to expand into new clients. We believe this would require the addition of new team members, but instead we are happy with the progress we are making at the moment. We believe we are not only building equity in business we believe in, but also building a product that could help the safety and wellness of our users.

Our Idea: As a team of engineers, two in the engineering field and one in computer science and software development, we wanted to find a way to put these skills to use in our company. As we did not have a revolutionary idea to build our own product, we wanted to base our company on the assumption that people have great ideas and lack the ability to execute on these ideas. Our mission is to enable these people and companies to make their ideas a reality, and allow them to go to market with a clean and user friendly product. We are using our skills and experience in hardware and device prototyping and testing, as well as software design and development to make this happen. Implementation: To this point, we have been working with a client building a human diagnostic and enhancement AI device. We have been consulting on mostly the design and creation of their first proof of concept, working on hardware and sensor interaction as well as developing the software allowing their platform to come to life. We have been working closely with the leaders of the company, who have the ideas and business knowledge, while we focus on the technology side. As for the scalability and market potential of our business, we believe that the potential market is not the limiting factor. Instead, the limiting factor to the growth of our business is the time we have to devote. We are currently only working with one client, and not looking to expand into new clients. We believe this would require the addition of new team members, but instead we are happy with the progress we are making at the moment. We believe we are not only building equity in business we believe in, but also building a product that could help the safety and wellness of our users.

This thesis examines how a recently proposed concept for a highly-truncated aerospike nozzle can be expected to perform at altitudes corresponding to ambient pressures from sea-level to full vacuum conditions, as would occur during second-stage ascent and during second-stage descent and return to Earth. Of particular importance is how the base pressure varies with ambient pressure, especially at low ambient pressures for which the resulting highly underexpanded flows exiting from discrete thrust chambers around the truncated aerospike merge to create a closed (unventilated) base flow. The objective was to develop an approximate but usefully accurate and technically rooted way of estimating conditions for which the jets issuing from adjacent thrust chambers will merge before the end of the truncated aerospike is reached. Three main factors that determine the merging distance are the chamber pressure, the altitude, and the spacing between adjacent thrust chambers. The Prandtl-Meyer expansion angle was used to approximate the initial expansion of the jet flow issuing from each thrust chamber. From this an approximate criterion was developed for the downstream distance at which the jet flows from adjacent thrust chambers merge. Variations in atmospheric gas composition, specific heat ratio, temperature, and pressure with altitude from sea-level to 600 km were accounted for. Results showed that with decreasing atmospheric pressure during vehicle ascent, the merging distance decreases as the jet flows become increasingly under-expanded. Increasing the number of thrust chambers decreases the merging distance exponentially, and increasing chamber pressure results in a decrease of the merging distance as well.

This project involved research into solar thermal and geothermal energy generation as possible solutions to the growing U.S. energy crisis. Background research into this topic revealed the effects of climate and environmental impacts as major variables in determining optimal states. Delving into thermodynamic engineering analyses, the main deliverables of this research were mathematical models to analyze plant efficiency improvements in order to optimize the cost of operating solar thermal and geothermal power plants. The project concludes with possible future research areas relating to this field.