Scholarship Symposium

Presenter: John Charles Tidwell III (Trey)
Faculty Advisor: Don Van

Almost everyone in school nowadays has a laptop, with a large amount of school work needing to use online resources. Also, almost everyone has experienced the pain of leaving their charger behind when their laptop has little to no charge left. The outcome of this 8th fractional factorial design of experiment is the duration of use of a laptop once fully charged. The overall objective expected of this experimental project is to maximize this operational duration knowing what consumes the battery's charge and to what extent. Factors affecting the outcome of this design of experiments are Brightness, Sound, Background program running, Streaming online, Multiple tabs open, and the environment (outside or room temperature). The results from this design of experiment will benefit the laptop users with tips to change settings and other ideas to conserve a battery's charge life.

Presenters: Emory Craft, John Mayer, and Reagan Oliver
Faculty Advisor: Don Van

Regenerative braking is an energy recovery mechanism that converts a moving vehicle's kinetic energy into storable electrical energy. The team researched the regenerative braking process and thought about how to improve the efficiency of it. The potential solution that was researched and designed took advantage of thermoelectric generators. These generators convert thermal energy, in the form of a temperature gradient, directly into electromagnetic energy through a phenomenon known as the Seebeck effect. The team proposes that these devices be implemented near the surface of brake pads in addition to normal regenerative braking systems to collect some of the heat loss that escapes to the atmosphere.

Presenter: Roger Baker
Faculty Advisor: Don Van

The design of this experiment investigated the effects of four factors on the precision of a commercially available small-bore rifle. The objective of this experiment is to maximize the level of precision to be similar to a custom competition rifle. The four factors are the type of ammunition, the torque on the action screw, taping the barrel, and removing the barrel band. As guided by the full factorial design of experiment, a combination of these factors will be changed for each shot group and the group will be measured for distance between impact points. The smallest distance yields the highest precision. This will be repeated until all combinations of the variables have been tried. Each experimental run will then be repeated three times to replicate the data. Lastly the results will be compared to a more expensive competition rifle.

Presenters: Benjamin Marsch and Tobey Taylor
Faculty Advisor: Don Van

Engines, generators, pumps, and all other machines lose significant amounts of energy to the environment in the form of useless heat and sound. Although many scientists and engineers have tried to recapture that heat using various clever methods, fewer efforts have been made to recapture the lost sound energy. We are interested in exploring how much energy exists in such sound. In this study we will attempt to quantify the energy carried in sound lost from a power-producing system. We will then explore some possible methods to extract that sound energy and convert it back into useful energy, noting the advantages and disadvantages of each method.