7/25/2023 0 Comments Propeller parallaxWavy lines on the monitor attempt to diagnose where the clock hurts. They consult an oscilloscope, which looks like it could be a piece of equipment belonging in an intensive care unit. Observers will be able to tell the time within five minutes based on which circle is lit.įor now, though, students continue to work through the aftermath of the short. Ultimately, 93 LEDs will light up each of the 12 circles. Brown grains trickle through the bottleneck. Garner demonstrates how the robotics will work by giving one barrel a spin. That’s the story for the next three weeks.”Īt the moment, the single clock hand that is supposed to both turn the five-minute hourglasses and point out the hour is frozen. “If things catch fire, we put out the fire and figure out what went wrong. “We roll with the punches,” Garner says looking on. Garner and the students appear to take the setback in stride. “It was wired into the wrong pole on the breadboard,” reports Hudson Burke, a computer engineering major from Sacramento, California.Ī breadboard is a plastic piece of equipment that allows engineers to try out electrical configurations without committing yet to soldering. Then, with a flash and a pop, a tiny cloud of smoke rises. The students are not tempted by any of these potential distractions because they’re engrossed in their work and each other’s company. A pinball machine in one corner goes ignored as well. Another contains video of the “Eye of Sauron” from “The Lord of the Rings.” At the center of the room, a table built to resemble a giant cassette tape flashes unnoticed. On the walls hangs an assortment of individualized electric guitars crafted by students who took Garner’s Advanced Mechatronics course. It’s mid-April when UVA Today visits the Mechatronics Lab, one of the rooms in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering building where awesomeness is built. But who will win? The students – or their stubborn, unfinished timepiece? A Whiff of Smoke This exercise in blood, sweat and gears will end one way or another. “There’s a conservation of problems, just like a conservation of energy in physics, where you can never completely get rid of problems, you just convert big problems into smaller, less-important ones that can be swept under the rug.” “There’s a kind of joke in design and engineering,” Garner said. That has made its completion by year’s end in no way a given. Associate professor Gavin Garner said the daring steampunk-style design has resulted in its share of migraines learning moments for his students. On another, with a Rotunda-shaped mirror at its center, the clock is meant to serve as a truism to which most alums will attest: You’ll have the time of your life at UVA.īut first the students have to get the clock working. On the one hand, with its 12 sand hourglasses that seem to float in space, encircled by futuristic-looking LED rings and controlled by precision robotics, the clock is meant to be a testament to Virginia’s engineering prowess. The ambitious chronometer – that’s the scientific term for anything that measures time – was designed to be the ultimate expression of what it means to go to school here. Six years in the making, the University-themed timepiece was started by student “Gizmologists” taking a capstone course, then shelved until this semester. Most of the 13 engineering whizzes taking the inaugural “The Art of Timekeeping” course have been coiled like mainsprings against one enemy in particular: a monumental robotic art clock dubbed “The Sands of Time.” The school year is almost over, and these fourth-year University of Virginia students have been working against the clock – just as the clock has been working against them.
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