Avoiding the Michael Scott Syndrome

Students will practice and navigate Google Earth. Students will practice creating mental maps

Language, Mechanical Memory, and the Speculative Sentence in Hegel

In this thesis, I examine the relation between the account of mechanical memory in Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences and the speculative sentence in his Phenomenology of Spirit. Both accounts involve a transition to speculative thinking, a kind of thinking that is free from given images and representations. By discussing them together I hope to illuminate how speculative thinking functions for Hegel and why it is important. Specifically, I try to show how what Hegel calls mechanical memory can shed light on Hegel’s more familiar notion of the speculative sentence. I also draw out implications of language and mechanical memory for what Hegel calls speculative thinking

The Virgins of Chile

Students will investigate the immigration stories and feast day celebrations of the Virgins of Latin America. Students will map where the ideas of each Virgin originated. Students will create and present a PowerPoint describing their assigned Virgin

Enhancement of the low frequency performance of thin, film-faced layers of foam by surface segmentation

While the control of high frequency noise by the use of porous treatments is relatively straightforward, it is correspondingly difficult to control low frequency noise owing to the general requirement that a porous layer should be a significant fraction of a wavelength in depth. Thus, it is of interest to develop low frequency sound absorbing treatments that are relatively compact by the use of surface treatments. Here, we illustrate an approach, in which a surface film is cut, to allow the incident sound to communicate directly with the air within the foam behind the film facing. The present work was inspired by standing wave tube measurements of film-faced foams. It was found that measurements of unfaced foam layers, or of foam layers with a loosely attached film layer could be reproduced well by existing theories. However, when a film was bonded to the surface of the foam layer, the results did not conform to the expected values, and showed an anomalous absorption peak at relatively low frequencies. Upon careful examination of the experimental arrangement, it was noticed that there was a narrow gap around the circumference of the film facing: i.e., there was a leak around the edge of the sample. When that leak was sealed by using a bead of silicone sealant, the anomalous low frequency peak disappeared, and the absorption was then as expected for a continuous film-faced layer. Thus, it was apparent that the low frequency absorption peak was due to the presence of the thin gap around the circumference of the foam layer

Why Immigrate?

Students will learn the reasons behind immigration. Students will identify any struggles or issues with immigration. Students will analyze how immigrants affect Americans

Experimental observation of exceptional points in coupled pendulums

The concept of exceptional point (EP) is demonstrated experimentally in the case of a simple mechanical system consisting of two coupled pendulums. Exceptional points correspond to specific values of the system parameters that yield defective eigenvalues. These spectral singularities which are typical of non-Hermitian system means that both the eigenvalues and their associated eigenvectors coalesce. The existence of an EP requires an adequate parameterization of the dynamical system. For this aim, the experimental device has been designed with two controllable parameters which are the length of one pendulum and a viscous-like damping which is produced via electromagnetic induction. Thanks to the observation of the free response of the coupled pendulums, most EP properties are experimentally investigated, showing good agreements with theoretical considerations. In contrast with many studies on EPs, mainly in the field of physics, the novelty of the present work is that controllable parameters are restricted to be real-valued, and this requires the use of adequate search algorithms. Furthermore, it offers the possibility of exploiting the existence of EPs in time-domain dynamic problems

Our Lady of the Rosary: Andacollo

Students will be able to identify the advantages and disadvantages of the devotion to the Virgin of Our Lady of the Rosary at Andacollo

A transverse isotropic equivalent fluid model combining both limp and rigid frame behaviors for fibrous materials

International audienceDue to the manufacturing process, some fibrous materials like glasswool may be transversely isotropic (TI): fibers are mostly parallel to a plane of isotropy within which material properties are identical in all directions whereas properties are different along the transverse direction. The behavior of TI fibrous material is well described by the TI Biot's model, but it requires to measure several mechanical parameters and to solve the TI Biot's equations. This paper presents an equivalent fluid model that can be suitable for TI materials under certain assumptions. It takes the form of a classical wave equation for the pressure involving an effective density tensor combining both limp and rigid frame behaviors of the material. This scalar wave equation is easily amenable to analytical and numerical treatments with finite element method. Numerical results, based on the proposed model, are compared with experimental results obtained for two configurations with a fibrous material. The first concerns the absorption of an incident plane wave impinging on a fibrous slab and the second corresponds to the transmission loss of a splitter-type silencer in a duct. Both configurations highlight the effect of the sample orientation and give an illustration of the unusual TI behavior for fluids