Over Christmas I got a wood burner from my girlfriends family. Having no artistic talent I used the laser cutter to create a outline for the mountains in the photo below. Then, doing a little investigating, learned how to use a wood burner and create different effects in the wood. I intentionally had the knot in the wood become the Sun or Moon, and the no-longer-apparent water stain become the horizon that the mountains loomed over.

Also for Christmas, but from my family, came a speaker kit. I am still working on the speaker casing, which is just glue together birch plywood. However, any good speakers have a crossover, shown beyond, which essentially only allows low frequency sound to play out of the subwoofers, and the high frequency sound out of the tweeters. Instead of giving you a crossover, you have to assemble it yourself with all the parts provided. They also give you a circuitry diagram so that you can assemble the crossover. I had to make two for the two different speakers in the kit.

One day while talking with Mr. Kaminski, Willie Norton and I noticed his speakers playing music and saw the way the speaker cone vibrated. We immediately decided that we wanted to put Oobleck on a speaker and then see what different sounds did to it. The video below is in real time and shows that different high and low frequencies do to the cornstarch mixture. Our end goal is to figure out a mixture of notes that will make the Oobleck look as if it is dancing.

For the Cleveland Clinic Expressions challenge a kid did different cancers suspended on different hearts under a large heart. I helped to laser engrave the names of the different cancers onto the hearts, one by one.

Below in the Fairview Shield in two parts as it was nailed to two different doors made for the counseling office. The shield is about 18 inches wide and 22 inches long. This is a problem as the laser cutter can only do 12 by 24 inches at a time. So I had to make a design that did half the sign at a time.

Damion Zody, Willie Norton, and I entered into the Hyland Innovation Challenge. Our idea was to innovate on the wind turbine that we have today. Our idea was to turn the turbine sideways, so it is parallel to the ground and have each blade rotate independently. These rotating blades would allow for all the blades except one to be parallel to the ground while the other is perpendicular to the ground. The wind would catch this blade and turn the turbine. As it spins that blade would rotate down and the next would rotate to be perpendicular. This way we have minimal drag on the all the blades expect one, which would have maximum drag to force the turbines to turn. That is one one of the modular pieces. Each piece would be 20 feet wide and 3 feet tall, and stackable, creating a tower of these turbines, matching the height of turbines today.

Last but not least, all the teachers got these paperclip holders as a Holiday gif from the principle. I was the one to laser cut the Fairview Shield, and Fairview Warriors onto the holders. I also created a template to hold 30 of them at a time as there was 90 to make in total.