Tour of New Parking Ramp

I've been a bit slow getting this posted. Members of the Engineering Club toured the new parking ramp after our last meeting on December 7. (Some others from my morning class who could not make the meeting had a shorter tour at 10 AM.) Special thanks to Larry Cliett from the TCC facilities office for giving his time for both tours, and a very special thanks to Jim Folds of Culpeppper Construction who stayed long after the construction work shut down to keep the site open and share lots of interesting information about the work.

Here we see Jim Folds (in the suit) with the afternoon tour group. One tidbit from the tour was that Jim is a dropout from the FSU College of Engineering. He left partway through and is now a project manager. (My opinion, having seen some good and bad projects while working as a surveyor during my college days, is that he is a very good project manager.)



He pointed out lots of details about this construction method and the logistics of it all. The pre-fab concrete pieces are being made in Georgia, near Atlanta, and trucked to Tallahassee. About 20 pieces arrive each day when they are going full speed, ready to be installed the next day after temporary storage off the road to the new North Lot.

One of the ways they are making money and saving TCC money at the same time (we basically are getting a 5 story ramp for the price of 4) is by using thinner pre-fab floor beams and adding the rest of the concrete and reinforcing steel on site. It also helps that construction is in a slump and they got lots of good (low) bids. You can see the construction details very clearly in this view.



And here is the view from the top. The ramp offers a great view of the State Capitol in the distance.



The latest news is that the upper deck will be covered with solar panels that will generate about 750 kW of power while shading the cars on the top level.

I have a lot more pictures from that tour and some earlier ones during the early phases of the project that I will try to organize here next semester.

Friday ASME Luncheon

TCC students are invited to attend the ASME "senior section" luncheon at 11:30 on Friday, 30 November, at the Ole Times Buffet on North Monroe, across from Lake Ella. If you leave before the question period, you can be back in time for the 1:25 calculus classes. Doug Jones says that you can't be late for his calc III class if you leave the meeting at the same time he does. (I say this is because he drives slowly.) Click on the flyer for details.



This promises to be a very interesting presentation. The City of Tallahassee is replacing the old gas- or oil-fired boiler with a "combined cycle" system that uses a gas turbine (jet engine) to generate electricity and then uses the waste heat from its exhaust to produce steam that will generate even more electricity. This is described on page 315 of the PHY2048 textbook in Example 19.2 and the Application at the bottom of the page. Read that before going to the lecture and you will really get a lot out of the talk.

You will also get a chance to eat lunch with local professional mechanical engineers and faculty and students from FAMU and FSU who attend these talks.

Gators -vs- Noles Meeting

We had a great turnout for our 3rd annual presentation by representatives from the University of Florida and the FAMU-FSU Colleges of Engineering.

Ms. Karen Bray, the transfer advisor from UF, gave a short presentation showing videos of some student projects and an overview of the different programs offered at UF. She also distributed information about those programs and answered questions about the transfer process, scholarships, and their transfer mentor program.

Prof. Shih, the chairman of the Mechanical Engineering program at FAMU-FSU, also addressed the same questions and described the differences between the programs available at UF and the ones available at the FAMU-FSU college. Both emphasized the importance of picking a field because you enjoy working hard on those kinds of problems, not because of pay levels of today's job market. There are easier majors if you just want to make money.

There were also a number of comments from others present, both current FSU students and an FSU engineering alumnus (Doug Windham) who is now on the TCC math faculty.

TCC ENGINEERING CLUB T-SHIRTS

The first order of T-Shirts has arrived. If you were on the July (07) Order List, please email Doug Jones at jonesd@tcc.fl.edu to confirm your size. We had 12 on that Order List, and I got the numbers, but I never got the list of names.

I'm not sure of the price, I just picked-up the shirts (Friday morning in the rain), and I've not gotten the bill yet. It's either $10 or $12 per shirt.

The shirts look good. I wore mine to my German School class Sat. morning and to the ill-fated football game Sat. afternoon.

DJ.

FRIDAY MEETING

ENGINEERING CLUB

MEETING – OCTOBER 19, 2007 (Fri.)

2:30 pm SM 260.

 

AGENDA

OFFICERS
Chair	Vice Chair & SGA Rep.	Secretary	Webmaster
Komlan Amesse	Miguel Marquina	Ann Wolfgang	Michael O'Connor

1. Introduction of Members, Visitors, and Guests.
   
   
2. Report on FSU-ASME meeting.
   
   
3. Update on the solar panel project.
   
   
4. Cancer Walk on Sunday, Oct 21.
   
   
5. Report on ASME Luncheon earlier today (Fri. 10/19).
   
   

Open Discussion.

MEETING FRI 10/05 == SM 260 == 2:30

The meeting will be Friday, Oct. 5, 2007, at 2:30 in SM 260. We are now holding meetings twice a month – first and third Friday. The agenda for tomorrow is modest.


Friday Agenda

1- Welcome
2- Project (Solar Powered Golf Cart)
3- Workshop (Planning for Graphing Calculator
Workshop)
4- Forum
5- Cancer Walk (need some volunteers)


Visit our WebPage at http://www.tccengineeringclub.com

TCC ENGINEERING CLUB SOLAR PROJECT

As a result of a great deal of preliminary work by club members, a decision was made at the meeting of Sept. 21, 2007, to pursue a project of conversion of a TCC golf cart to solar power. A team was formed, headed by Aaron Bauldree.

The team's first meeting was Sat. Sept. 29. Here is a summary of the meeting, provided by Komlan Amesse.

*******

We met today at 11am at All Saints Cafe. Those present were Komlan Amesse, Ann Wolfgang, Giovanni Meritis, Aaron Bauldree and Ramonn Soto. This meeting is the kickoff of the project. We talked about all the physical constraints we will face and how to get the project done on time. The solar system we going to build is called Solar Assistant System. Aaron set up a forum web ( http://www.tccsolar.freeforums.org ) page where everyone can go and discuss the project. We assigned to ourselves a duty to research on the efficient solar panel to use. We also decided that it will be very nice to find a solar panel that we can display on Oct 03 at the TCC Spirit Day. (Do you know anyone that own solar panel that we can borrow and just display it for the event?) The meeting ended at 12:08.

*******

I encourage everyone to visit the forum.

If you would like to participate in this project, please contact Aaron via the forum. It is very easy to register and log in.