At today's meeting we discussed new projects. The two most popular and practical suggestions were a laser and a quadcopter.
Laser
I'm sure you've heard of a laser. Technically, the devices know as lasers are LASER devices. This is because LASER stands for Light Amplification by the Stimulated Emission of Radiation. We are going to build a laser device.
Our ultimate goal is to bounce a laser off the moon and time how long it takes to get back. As a proof of concept, we are going to do that, except across campus, with a smaller device.
Quadcopter
One of problems with helicopters is that they only have one main rotor/propeller, thus they need a second, smaller, perpendicular propeller to compensate for the rotational forces (torque). With an even number of rotor, half rotating one direction (CW or CCW) and half the other direction, the torque cancels out. A common hobby rotorcraft is a quadcopter, with four rotors. We plan to build one from scratch.
We agreed to work on this project on Fridays, 10 to 2, starting on 3/29.
