Materials Science Department

This is the First in a 5 part blog post series about every single department we have at Discovery Park.
UNT's College of Engineering at Discovery Park has 5 departments, each significantly different from the other, but with a few similarities.

1. Materials Science and Engineering
2. Computer Science and Engineering
3. Electrical Engineering
4. Engineering Technology
5. Mechanical and Energy Engineering

Today's post will be about Materials Science and Engineering. This department offers a four year Bachelor's in Science degree in Materials Science and Engineering, as well as Masters and Doctorates' degrees in Materials Science and Engineering.

I recently got to roam around this department's millions of dollars worth of equipment. In fact, I was giving a tour to a few high school students and the Materials guys were kind enough to demonstrate a few of their machines for us. Research fields in this department span a huge amount of topics ranging from nanotechnology, applications of nano-scale research in materials, medical materials in prosthetic limbs, material coatings to be used in hospital operating environments, materials used in the United States Air Force aircraft, and much much more. It's one of the hardest departments for me to describe while giving tours, but also one of the most fun. The machinery used is something you would expect to see out of a movie like Iron Man or iRobot, or at local corporate giants such as Raytheon, Bell Helicopters, Lockheed Martin, and so on. They range from Electron Scanning Microscopes, to Dual Ion Beam Microscopes, to a LEAP - Local Electrode Atom-Probe - machine:

This LEAP machine pictured out of Discovery Park is one out of only 5 in the United States. You can see on the right hand side of the picture a blurry depiction of an atom being rendered in 3-D

The order of operations goes something like this; use the Electron Scanning Microscope to seek out a piece of material you would like to examine. You can examine a material at X300,000 zoom, and see things at a level that light based microscopes cannot see. Then you can use a laser powered Ion Beam to cut a piece of the material out at a level so precise, it would be the equivalent of shooting a bull's-eye with an archery set from an airplane at 35,000 feet. Then, if that weren't enough for you (and nothing is ever enough for engineers), you take that material over to this LEAP - Local Electrode Atom-Probe - machine, and you can "scan" the atom and you are presented with a 3-D view of the object and all its properties. There are millions of combinations of applications of these machines, but this is just one example.

And this LEAP machine pictured out of Discovery Park is one out of only 5 in the United States.

With a degree in Materials Science, jobs are available in small and large companies in research, development, manufacturing, marketing, and materials design and structures. You might work in such industries as aerospace, appliance, automotive, biomedical, communication, computer, construction, forensics, manufacturing, microelectronics, nanotechnology, nuclear, oil and gas, power generation, shipbuilding, or sports.

Coppell High School Engineering Expo

I'm telling you, engineers love expos and conferences. I've been to quite a few of these and they're just as fun as the last one every time. It's basically a bunch of engineers and nerds getting together and sharing stories about how great it is to be in engineering.


This event took place at Coppell High School. There were many schools and businesses there looking for bright minds - high school student minds to be exact. Here's a list of a few of those who attended:

1. Armadillo Aerospace
2. AT&T
3. Bell Helicopter
4. Dunaway Associates
5. EF Johnson Technologies
6. ExxonMobil
7. Fujitsu Network Communications
8. General Motors
9. IBM
10. NASA - High School Aerospace Scholars
11. Nokia Siemens Networks
12. Sikrosky Aircraft
13. Southwest Airlines
14. ST Microelectronics
15. Teradata
16. Texas Instruments (TI)

In addition, the Air Force ROTC, US Air Force Academy, US Army Corps of Engineers, US Naval Academy, US Merchant Marine Academy, and West Point were also looking for engineering students. On top of that there were 37 colleges recruiting engineering students, including our very own UNT.

The building was packed. In addition to the myriad of schools, businesses, students and groups, there were also student presentations. One that I visited was a student built solar powered car. It was quite the site and I got to ask him a few questions about his work. It's a project of about three years now, and this student worked in a group of about 8 students. There are 6 panels on the car that cost about $800 each with the total cost of the car equaling about $20,000. It takes ~6-7 hours for the car to go from 0 charge to full charge. It can go 40 MPH and drive around all day he says. The students made a good argument in pointing out that cars like these aren't very cost effective - a common argument when dealing with solar powered tech. If the skeleton of this car cost $20,000, and my Hyundai cost $13,000 brand new, there's some work to be done in making a project like this cost effective.

Great job Engineering students!

NewToy Lecture at Discovery Park

You may have heard of a game called Words with Friends. It's a scrabble-esque game for the iPlatform where two players slowly take turns playing through a game. The game could take hours, days, or weeks, and that's the beauty of always connected hardware and a turn based game such as this. It's one of those games you can play in your 4 minutes of spare time while in line at the cafe, bored at home, or while listening to the NewToy lecture (hehe). Words with Friends has been a top grossing iPhone app for just about as long as it's been on the app store.

"Toy Maker" Vijay Thakkar, developer at NewToy, came to lecture at Discovery Park to prospective Mobile device programmers to give some insight on what it's like to develop for mobile platforms.

"The average age people get their first cell phones nowadays is 8" Vijay explained, "with 35% of 8 year olds owning a cell phone." Clearly mobile devices is an exponentially growing field. Vijay goes on to explain that since smart phones are basically a compass, game system, camera, newspaper, laptop, and gps (oh yeah and a phone, too) all in one, it's no wonder mobile phones are on the up-swing.

One thing Vijay hit on was the vast differences between programming on a mobile device as compared to traditional computers. He said one thing you have to concentrate on is getting the core idea of your "app" developed 100%, and that your app should be able to perform it's core functionality all day, all night 24/7 with no problems. Even if that core feature is something very basic like make farting noises, parse XML, or run a scrabble game engine, your app should be able to perform that activity with 0 flaws. Traditionally, computer programmers have focused on developing full-fledged programs that can do A-Z but not necessarily be able to perform functions F, P, and Q very well. It's especially straining on a small development team or on a team with limited financial resources. With the ideology of developing the core function 100%, releasing, and building from there, your development time is cut in half and your users can provide feedback in order to shape the future of your project. In addition, if users reject your idea all together, you'll have saved that much more time in development whereas you would have spent all that time developing a full fledged app for nothing.

Needless to say, a lot more was said during his lecture, but I don't have enough space, time, or patience to share it all. There are, of course, many lectures held at Discovery Park outside of regular course work, and this was just one of them.

Oh and I felt like a tool for asking, but I got a picture with him specifically for this blog entry x)

Cool cats. Shame I didn't get a shirt EDIT 12-8-2010: My mobile dev teacher Dr. Garlick was gracious enough to give me a shirt. Thanks!!

Fort Worth Air Show

This weekend I went to the Fort Worth Air Show - a 15 minute drive from Denton. . I've never been to an air show before.. but upon getting there, I found out it's like a military parade but with planes.

Notice how I'm representin' Go Geek!

There were helicopters too. A lot of them. This orange one has got to be my favorite. This whole air show has only intensified my desire to learn how to fly and to skydive. Some day.. some day.
There were all sorts of things to see. An A-10 Warthog, C-130 Cargo plane which they nick named "Fat Albert", a Chinook, commercial airliners, and more. The things that they actually flew in front of us was a different story. They flew a million planes. I remember seeing the F-16
Falcon first, followed by the F-22 Raptor, and bringing up the grand finale was the Blue Angels.

All of the world's engineering efforts in the last century just flew over my head
The 1940's era P-51 Mustang with a 1970's era F-16 Falcon and a modern day F-22 Raptor as its wingmen

Their breath taking precision flying make them a sight to see.. In addition we saw several skydivers doing some tricks and Ross Perot made a guest appearance as a skydiver. I think I'm a bit too young to know exactly why he's famous but I know he ran for office at some point. There were also stunt planes tumbling through the air all day.

That will be me some day

There were plenty of familiar companies at the air show. Bell helicopters being one of them. They are the ones that manufacture most of the parts for the helicopters I saw at this show. They are at every single solitary job fair UNT's college of engineering hosts. In fact, my blog post from February of last year details every company that was at the job fair that year including Bell Helicopter Textron Inc. Seeing as Bell is right down the street from us, I'm sure it'd be easy to get a job there, if you set your mind to it in engineering.

Blue Angels playing chicken

Wish I could post all my pictures!

UNT Women's Lacrosse Tournament at College Station

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It was a beautiful day for Lacrosse, a day at the amusement park, going to the beach, and playing mini golf, but most importantly, it was a beautiful day for Lacrosse. The UNT Women's Lacrosse team traveled to College Station just this last weekend to compete against top tier schools for first place. The UNT Women's Lacrosse team is made up of about 26 players and is open for anyone to join and learn about lacrosse. This is one out of many many teams that UNT hosts out of its sports clubs - I myself play with UNT's Tennis sports club. It's surprising how many people have no idea what Lacrosse is. It's fun of course but it can be a little rough at times.

The team during a match

As a bystander, I got to take pictures. That works out though because now I have a lot of material to use for this blog entry.

Lindsey taking on SMU

The team played their hearts out and played 3 games that day. We played our first match against Empire - a Texas A&M alumni team. Most of them had played before and UNT tried their best but ended up losing.

Round 2 UNT played against SMU. UNT lost 14-0
Round 3 UNT tied against Texas Tech 8-8.

Defense is critical

By the end of the day, everyone gained valuable experience, had tons of fun, and ate ice cream. Who doesn't like ice cream? Well done Mean Green!

Sarah after scoring a goal. Complete with fist pump and referee approval. Nice

Traditions - UNT Bonfire

Every school has traditions. Here's one of UNT's.

The bonfire being built

We build bonfires. Every homecoming, students put together a huge bonfire. I've heard it's the biggest hand-made bonfire in Texas. No cranes or heavy machinery used ever. Above is a picture I snapped of it the day before the thing was lit ablaze. You can sort of make out a few kids walking around on top stacking up more wood. Why have this tradition? I'm not sure, to be honest, but maybe it's to light the fire of encouragement and watch it spread freely and wildly until we consume our opponents in a furious unstoppable rage.

Or maybe it's because fires are awesome.

Hello World v2.0

It's been a while, but I'm still alive. And believe me I am still alive. And while you're dying I'll be still alive. I feel fantastic and I'm still alive..... still alive... still alive. (Portal, Still Alive)

It's a new semester and a new start. Now that I've settled into the new semester, gotten my classes well under way, taken a few tests and lost a few nights of sleep studying, I can start blogging again.

So what am I up to nowadays? I'm delving into the core of my degree plan. I have 4 classes; namely Database Systems and Information Integration, IT Systems and Administration, Mobile Device Development, and Discrete Math. I have another three or four semesters of school work to go before I can call myself a graduate. Perhaps if I continue to take summer school courses I can finish sooner but, I don't know if I've ever had a summer all to myself since I've started my college career. Summer school is just something that has to be done sometimes. It's for the betterment of myself and to get ahead. The sooner you finish, the better!

That said, I still had a fantastic summer. I got to go to New York state to visit my family and participate in paintball (it was my first time, and it was awesome), Kayak, and visit with all my family. The very next week I went to Florida to partake in an NSF conference. Luckily I had enough time to pay Sea World a visit! Some day I will swim with dolphins... some day.