New Visions Engineering
About New Visions
New Visions is a BOCES program for high school seniors to get a head start on college. It offers a great learning experience in one of three fields you choose to pursue, whether it be Engineering, Medical, or Animal Science. They offer the program to surrounding school districts and accept about 12-16 students per program. I got into the New Visions Engineering program through an application process that included writing a paper and having an interview. The Engineering program is a Physics based class with an English and Government credit. After spending the mornings at Lansing High School to obtain a Physical Education credit, I drive to Cornell University to take the New Visions classes.
Duel Enrollment
We are duel enrolled with Austin University in a program called Engineer Your World. We are given long term projects to work on throughout the year. So far we have built a pinhole camera from scratch and have recently been working on re-modelling a poorly made pig-shaped flashlight and will be giving a pitch to a fake company.
Classwork
Mainly being focused around Physics and Engineering makes the class so much fun. In addition to reading Physics textbooks we do a lot of hands-on activities. Recently we were able to go into Cornell's clean room and take apart and learn about a plasma etcher.
Field Trips
In New Visons we go on a lot of field trips related to engineering and local government. Learning about the local government is very important and getting involved is even better.
Cornell AgriTech
Many things are done at Cornell AgriTech. Including food processing, food packaging, plant growing and breeding and wine testing. We were able to see all the facilities. The Machine above can seal any bottle of liquid or food. The container must be a flexible material like plastic, or the bottle will just explode because of the amount of pressure .
Cornell AgriTech
The Image above is of the food processing plant where small and large companies come to test there products to see if they need to make any changes. - color, taste, shape, ect.
Cornell Laboratory Certification
I am Laboratory Safety Certified though The Cornell University Department of Enviromental Health and Safety.
IMG_5442.MOVPinhole Camera
Our first project for our duel enrollment class was to build a pinhole camera from scratch for people with manual dexterity issues, and write a lab report on it.
IMG_5440.MOVPinhole Camera
My team used reflective tape for to keep the box light-tight and made everything with tape, form board and card board. We were able to get some really nice pictures after we were done building it.
Cornell Photo Lab
Before we built our camera, we went to Conrell's photo lab to learn about making our own film for our cameras; as well as how to treat the film.
Cornell Photo Lab
We also talked about calculations for light exposer and foci distance, which we calculated for our cameras.
Camera Picture
This is the best picture that my team took from our pinhole camera
Pig Flashlight Redesign
After building the pinhole Cameras are next project for Engineer Your World was to re-designing a poorly made flashlight based off data driven decisions. My team has a rough sketch of two good pig concepts. One is a SWIG, or a swiss army pig. taking the idea of a swiss army knife and making the flashlight better specifically for campers. Our other design is called The Hunter Pig. This pig is for hunters to create animal calls. The idea is that the pig stores multiple types of animal call reeds that you can switch what animal you are hunting. Finally, after we finish the technical drawings, we must give a pitch to a fake company convincing them why the newly modeled pig is better.
Government Trips
We read and learn about federal government in class but mainly get involved with local officals to learn about local and state goverment.
Tompkins county legislator
Ithaca was much more focused on local government issues than the neighboring town of Ovid. We learned about problems with our town like the homeless situation and tax collector problems, as well as the steps being taken to handle the issues.
Joseph Borst (Ovid Town Supervisor)
Joseph Borst was a very straight forward man that knew so much about his town and how to help it. He helped us understand smaller scale government and talked about how he gets things done and what he does for the town.
Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility
This Cornell's clean room - their, "mission is to enable rapid advancements in science, engineering and technology at the nanoscale by providing efficient access to nanotechnology infrastructure and expertise"
Plasma Etcher
We were able to take apart a plasma etcher worth approximately 600,000 dollars that the facility was scrapping for parts. Plasma etching is a device that uses plasma to etch or remove material from a polymer substrate, oxide, metal, glass or ceramic. Plasma is a highly ionized gas that can be used to clean, etch, and deposit materials on surfaces.
The Picture in the top left is of Cornell's six million dollar micro scope. It is so powerful it can see electrons. Shown to us by the lab manager John Grazul.
