Well, these past few days certainly have been busy! Since our visit to the dialysis center, Caleb, Jacinta and I have turned our attention to our projects for the Poly, and it has been quite a productive week!
For the past two weeks, Caleb, Jacinta and I have been working on a new, electronic, version of an IV drip. We were given an incomplete senior design project from students at the Poly, and asked to modify their proposal of a 555 timer and a solenoid relay. Assuming a constant flow rate on the IV drip, the timer would count down a preprogrammed time, closing the IV when a certain time, and therefore a certain amount of fluid, had passed through the catheter. Working to improve the model, we found a more advanced programmable timer – able to count up to longer time intervals than the 555 timer. Additionally, Caleb found a mechanical timer, similar to that used on a microwave, which would greatly simplify the proposed circuit. When we presented these designs to Rodwell he seemed pleased – about the new programmable timer. As an electrical engineer, he seemed less impressed with Caleb’s simple, mechanical timer. Though we were initially confused by this, it makes sense. First of all, a mechanical solution is probably not the best thing to come up with for an electrical engineering design project. Secondly, Rodwell explained that mechanical products were easier to break, and they frequently malfunctioned. Meanwhile, programmable circuit boards were more durable, reliable, and broke less often. Moving forward with this design, we have ordered components for our proposed circuit and are looking forward to building a prototype!
Our other big project has been a presentation for faculty at the Poly. For the past week, we have been working on preparing a three-hour lecture, explaining in detail how medical instrumentation labs function at Rice. We will be going over basic goals and objectives of each lab we have taken, as well as presenting some of the materials covered and demonstrating some projects students have completed in the past. Importantly, we hope to showcase the abilities of LabVIEW and work with the faculty, allowing them to see how the materials we brought from Rice could be integrated into their new bioengineering curriculum.
Throughout the busy week, we have also had lots of fun! I would say that the highlight of our evenings has been watching the world cup – the Portugal/Ghana and US/Germany games were particularly exciting, as we were watching in a room filled with us, Germans, and Portuguese spectators! Additionally, this weekend the interns from Namitete visited us! It was nice to see everyone again so soon, and we had fun showing them around Blantyre. In particular, the markets in Blantyre are much bigger than Namitete, so our visitors stocked up on avocado, papaya, pineapple, and other fruit that they had been missing! Today we will be finalizing our presentation for tomorrow (yikes!) and watching a cricket match in which one of our British housemates is playing – I couldn’t ask for a better weekend, and I’m excited to see how the faculty react to our presentation!
Namitete Interns Visit!
