CATALYST Academy

Today I began my first day at Cornell's Catalyst Academy.  Catalyst Academy is an engineering program run by the diversity programs in engineering department of Cornell University.  High School students apply during the school year, and of the many applicants, 45 are chosen to attend the week-long program.  Every day begins with two, two-hour lectures from prominent Cornell professors explaining more about their individual fields.  This was followed by four hours of research for our final group projects.

The lectures were incredibly helpful, as they each gave some insight into the different engineering fields, as well as gave specific information regarding the engineering majors offered at Cornell.  It was interesting to find out how far the umbrella of engineering spans as well as the amount of commingling among the different fields.

The research project focused on creating an environmentally and economically conscious house.  Using
Arduino
the least amount of energy possible, the house must both heat and cool itself using water running through a copper pipe and LED lights.  The four-person groups were split into two teams, one that worked as electrical engineers, programming an arduino that would control the lighting and temperature sensors, and another that worked more as civil engineers, designing testing the efficiency of different house models using Google Sketchup with a plugin called Open Studio.

The electrical engineers wrote code that would determine the threshold for both lighting and cooling.  When the house went over 500 lux or 28 degrees celsius, the arduino would turn the lights on or start the pump that sent ice water through the house.  This was a crucial part of the project because the house had to meet the certain set-points while also remaining comfortable.

The civil engineers simulated different building designs to determine the best one.  Using a standard model in google sketchup, we added windows and overhangs and tested them for an entire years worth of weather from Elmira New York, just a bit down the road from Cornell, to determine the energy efficiency of certain combinations of features.  We then used this data to determine the final design of the building.  The data collected from these tests were crucial in determining the best house model.

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