2.671 is an AMAZING class (that many people dislike, for reasons that are totally beyond me) and I've been having a great time in it. I've been writing lab reports, doing labs, learning, measuring, and pretty much just going nuts.

For our final (9th) lab of the semester, we were assigned a lab station with a particular setup. One station had an anechoic chamber with some microphones and a tweeter with some tanks of various gases, another station had some DC motors with a force gauge and a prony brake setup, another has a beam that is wired up to record its response to an impulse with various levels of damping, etc. The lab setup my partner Pall and I were assigned? Force Gauge. Excellent.

The lab that most people do with the force gauge involves measuring the strength of your bicep and correlating it with EKG and all sorts of other stuff. For lab 9, each team of two people was given a setup and allowed to come up with their own experiment. Pall and I are convinced we had the best setup for this. We decided to measure the impulse of a head when it was snapped up from a sleeping position (not much unlike lecture). We grabbed a strap from the collapsible litter group in 2.009 (that didn't make any sense to you, that's ok) and rigged it up to the force sensor. Then, it was time to do science.

In the end, these were the results:

Come to MIT, you get to do this.

Comments (Closed after 30 days to reduce spam)

Stand back! I'm going to try science!

Posted by: Anonymous on December 9, 2009

I want to get the "Stand back..." shirt.

Posted by: Nate on December 9, 2009

Haha that looks like so much fun. Oh how I wish to be accepted and do things like this

Posted by: Jamie '14? on December 9, 2009

Thanks Snively, I was really itching to see a nice colored graph of the slight pain you went through in the name of science!

Posted by: Anthony on December 9, 2009

You have the force, now can you calculate the tension in the rope? haha

Posted by: Ethan on December 9, 2009

I am totally going to view my EA decision with rotateme.org!!!!

Thanks for sharing this!

Posted by: David K on December 9, 2009

YES. Yet another reason I long from the fiery depths of my soul to attend MIT. Actual science!

Posted by: VAL ('14?) on December 9, 2009

Very cool experiment. I love MIT.

lol the rotateme.org is so cool

Posted by: Lauren on December 9, 2009

Stand back!

I'm going to try SCIENCE!

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

Posted by: XKCD on December 9, 2009

You guys are so creative! =) I love how they let you come up with your own experiment.

Posted by: Justin on December 9, 2009

Cool experiment, guys-very creative teaching & learning.
One question- what's a "prony" as in prony brake setup?

Posted by: Mom out west on December 9, 2009

Never mind- once I uppercased Prony, I found out what it is. Yay- MIT blogs teach me new stuff.

Posted by: Mom out west on December 9, 2009

I love MIT blogs; they make me feel like I'm already in. (I haven't submitted my form yet!) Did I mention that I think MITers are really cool and creative?
@ Snively: Are those pictures? The computer is not displaying them. I'm itching to see them.

Posted by: D on December 10, 2009

Haha...what are you guys gonna write on your lab report??
@ Snively:
Seems like your professors shouldn't wake you up when you fell asleep in class. You might strain your neck. =P

Very creative!=D

Posted by: Anonymous on December 10, 2009

hehe funny stuff and really usefull
I am studing electrical engineering and we used this for some physics lab...the outcome was really funny^^

Posted by: ktountas on December 10, 2009

@D: Those are videos embedded from youtube;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNpkjz_xz3c is the first one, you can get to the others from there.

Posted by: Anthony on December 10, 2009

Never thought I'd make the blogs... I guess I'll take what I can get haha. My head hurt the rest of the day

Posted by: Pall on December 10, 2009

Thanks a lot Antony.

Posted by: D on December 10, 2009

@Pall
Too bad about hurting yourself, but it was done in the name of SCIENCE, so that makes it okay But it did look pretty painful... you guys looked like you really snapped your necks

Posted by: Lauren on December 10, 2009

Thanks Lauren, and I must say that Snively took the worse of the two self-inflicted beatings.

Posted by: Pall on December 10, 2009

@Snively,

Nice T-shirt. I really really regretted not having done the Orange Tour.

Posted by: MoldyOldAlum on December 11, 2009

yay hands on experience! i.e. "Mens et Manus"
that is why i love MIT!

Posted by: navin on December 12, 2009

The reason not everyone LOVES that class is because of the rather massive writeups you get to do on said experiments.

Sorry my conscience told me to tell these folks the other side of the coin

Cheers,
Slightly washed up Course 2 Senior
(who knows exactly what you said about 2.009, heh)

Posted by: Zach R '10 on December 12, 2009

Correct me if I'm wrong but this doesn't make sense to me. I mean you should try to fasten the strap on someone in dizzy condition(well you said sth about sleeping position but both of you didn't seem sleepy at all). Otherwise the force is not really natural, one can try his strength to exceed the force(well unless you guys want to see who is the stronger one here). See my point?
Anyway, this experiment taught me sth, never thought that the backward force is actually stronger than the forward force. Well done Snively^^

Posted by: QA (14'?) on December 13, 2009

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