Results!?!??

I don't want to jinx it, so I'll just say that my project is working better than ever before. Putting in 11 hours straight can be well worth it! It may also help that I work best around 4-7PM, a time when I'm usually getting ready to/going home from the lab. But things will change when classes start in a week and a bit; I just don't know how yet.

I'm now at the point where I'm testing and hoping I don't discover any more problems...We'll see how that goes. Anyway, it put me in a strange mood of wanting to look back on this project and this summer in terms of research...

I didn't want to do this project, at first. I distinctly remember turning it down last year, because I did not want to be on my own project; but I agreed this summer because...well, because results seemed more likely than on my previous project, because now I did want to do something on my own and have a result to show for it, and maybe because the work that my predecessor did seemed more promising than starting from scratch. And now that the summer is almost over, most of these reasons have justified themselves. I have produced something! It may not work perfectly, but it is far more than what existed before!

I learned three new software tools: a circuit simulator called SIMetrix (if you need one, and you will as an EE, ME, AE, or Physics major, or want to play with one, I recommend it), PBASIC for the Parallax Basic Stamp Microcontroller and Visual Basic for Excel (great tool!). I've learned a whole lot about circuit design and statistics; and probably some stuff about other things, too.

Best of all, I learned about myself: I prefer simulating to measuring, programming to running test after test; I still like greasing bearings, taking things apart, and making a real, physical product, though. I like to learn new things from lots of different areas (electronics, programming, math, and of course fluid mechanics) and put them together; furthermore, I am very capable of doing this!

What does this mean for my future? I'm not 100% sure. (I still have to test my hypothesis, kind of like on my project, haha.) Still, I'm a lot less worried about my graduate school choices than I would have been had I not done this project; now I know I have many, many choices and one of them is bound to suit me!