Christina Holman | Design Blog

If you've followed my main blog and online engineering portfolio this far, then you know a little about me already. If not, I'm Christina Holman. I just finished my first year at Wellesley College and I loved every minute of it. Throughout the year, I pursued my potential dual-majors in Economics and Electrical Engineering. I explored my passion for engineering and interests in other STEM fields, from electricity and magnetism to engineering fundamentals to multivariable calculus. I even took my first course in economics and thoroughly enjoyed it. Thus far, the future looks quite bright. I was fortunate enough to hear of the  Science Center Summer Research Program  and the few research opportunities in physics. I was even more fortunate to be selected to work under Prof. James Battat with his ongoing investigation into dark matter. Although the project is under the label of "Physics," many of the skills and knowledge deals with engineering principles, so I cannot

(L to R, Christina and Kat with the Wellesley Energy Bike) Last week, my partner Kat Roche and I finished our final design of the Wellesley Energy Bike display and got to show it off in the science center during the exhibition. In general, I think the project came out well despite all the difficulties: participants really felt the difference between bulb types as they were pedaling and viewers saw the difference in effort. To summarize the design process: We sketched out all our ideas of how to bring sensors into an interactive display about energy. We broke down the design into three parts: works-like , looks-like and learns-like . Then, we began building and experimenting with different mechanical/electrical functions: Back wheel was raised off the ground using a bike stand and placed flushed against the PVC wheel attached to the permanent-magnet motor  The axle turned along with the wheel and transferred mechanical energy into electrical energy from the spinn

Kat and I are so excited for today's engineering exhibition.  Come see the interactive, educational display at 2pm in the Focus area (1st floor of the Science Center)! Charge Your Laptop Power a Hair Dryer Yesterday, we placed the final touches: the hair dryer, the energy facts and descriptions, the switch covers, etc. We were so surprised that we did not stay into the wee hours of the night preparing for the public demonstration. Currently, I am working on the promo video that we will show tomorrow and place on the official website . (Don't worry, I'll post it here too.)  For now, we are just basking in our one-less-thing-to-do state of happiness. Share your feedback if you try the Wellesley Energy Bike .