In-class presentations in Week 4 (2/13/08).
Requirement:
Numerically analyze and represent an energy flow in a specific domain. For example, you might examine the energetics of a particular sport, your commute or work environment, the industry of your home town, etc.
This is an exercise in research, numerical analysis, and clear presentation. There's no physical component here - just you and your creativity, plus the internet, library, and/or the Smil reference.
The output will be in the medium of your choice - it could be an image (such as the flow diagrams published by the DOE, or the diagrams in the Smil text), an animation, a video, etc. It could be a story or narrative in text form on the web. These requirements are deliberately loose - I'm assuming you have a particular area of expertise in communicating via technology and I'm allowing you to choose your methods accordingly. Make it beautiful, make it compelling!
What is required is rigorous numerical analysis. Your work must be thoroughly annotated (in the presentation itself or, if appropriate, in an accompanying text document) with references to sources (if you looked figures up) or to assumptions / observations you have drawn from your experience. If, for example, you are examining baseball, you might calculate the kinetic energy of the ball after being pitched and after being hit. You would site the mass and typical velocity of the ball in each state. Additionally you might observe a pitcher, estimate the time required to move the ball from rest to releasing the pitch at full velocity, and thus estimate the average power from the pitcher during the pitch.
Time
Two weeks - one for analysis (2-6 hours); one for generating the media (3-8 hours)