2020(S08) Lecture:week 3

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Week 3 Studio

Part 1: The Sorting Hat

Based on the ideas from your letters, comic strips and storyboards the class will be organized into TEMPORARY camps. These camps are intended to cluster related projects and will include all the interesting corners and regions of the project areas you've defined so far. Each camp will also be assigned one or more senior biological engineering student(s) from 20.902/947 as the camp counselor(s). Once sorted, you, your campmates and your counselor(s) should review and catalog the ideas that got you there. In cataloging your ideas, you should include a name for each project and a one sentence description of the problem or opportunity it will address. Prepare these as a powerpoint presentation that you will show to the class as well as email to the instructors, nkuldell and endy AT mit DOT edu. The last slide in your presentation should be a recap slide to review all the ideas presented. The last hour of the studio time will be dedicated to the presentation of these camp catalogs.

Part 2: Mapping the world of projects

Pull up a chair and listen as your classmates present their catalogs of ideas. As you listen , you should make note of those projects from each camp that are most interesting to you and why. You will be asked list your top choice and your second choice for camps and your top three project ideas in each camp before next week.

For next time

Email your first and second choice for a camp assignment to your counselor as well as your 3 favorite project ideas in each camp. Your camp counselor will forward a collected spreadsheet to Natalie and Drew.

Week 3 Thursday

Challenge: The Clock of the Long Now

Humans have had a stable climate for about 10,000 years and we can hope for another 10,000 at least. Assuming no catastrophic events, what would you like to build now that could still be of service 10,000 years from now? How could you build such a long-lasting artifact? Wisely anticipating future needs is part of it. For example carpenters in the 14th century build marvelous wooden cathedrals and, at the same time planted trees, wisely anticipating a future when the beams of their structures might need replacing and providing the raw materials to enable that. What else might need to be pre-positioned to perpetuate an artifact through time?

Instructions: you and your tablemates are should design a clock according to the Danny Hill's specifications; he called for "a clock that ticks once a year. The century hand advances once every one hundred years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium. I want the cuckoo to come out every millennium for the next 10,000 years." Several design considerations will be important to discuss as you think about how to build a clock that will behave as expected until the year 12,008. You will have 45 minutes to address these aspects of your clock's design and documentation:

  1. longevity: how will you keep the clock working, presuming you'll have all and only the technology and materials that are available today?
  2. maintenance: how will your children's children's children keep this clock working? You can assume they'll be as smart but no smarter than you.
  3. user's guide: how will future generations understand this clock without stopping or disassembling it?
  4. improvements: how will you improve your clock over time? It should be possible to improve the clock over time?
  5. prototyping: how will you build and test your clock?

Begin by reviewing the rules for brainstorming, that are here then either build consensus around one idea or take a vote for the top 3 and then the top choice. Once the general idea for your clock is set, get to work on each of the design elements listed above. After 45 minutes, each table will report back to the group. You may want to organize your ideas or sketch your plan on the whiteboards. You should also record your ideas in your lecture response log here where you'll note

  • what the activity was
  • why you think it might have been included in this class
  • if the activity helped you think about:
    • ways to make biology easier to engineer
    • consequences of successfully engineering biology
    • clever ways nature solves physical challenges
    • ways nature innovates
  • if the activity has given you any new tools/considerations that could be useful for your project.

For next time

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