Month: September 2018

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Engineer Strand

In our engineering class, I got an assignment from my facilitator to do research about our desired famous people who took their path in engineering. I picked Elon Musk because his seminal works introduced me to the path of engineering.

     Elon Musk’s Biography  

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa—he is currently 47 years old. He obtained his Canadian citizenship in 1989 because it was easier for him to obtain the American citizenship; he became the American citizenship in 2002.  Musk was a son of a Canadian mother and a South African father. At the age of 10, his parents got divorced while Elon started to develop his interest in computers. He taught himself programming when he was 12, and he made his first ever software game called Blaster. Later in his life, Musk took two years at Queen’s University and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated from Wharton School and majored in Physics and Art in Economics. When Musk was 24 years old, he moved to California to pursue a Ph.D. in physics at Stanford University. Two days later, Musk left the Ph.D. program to start a business. In 1995, Musk and his younger brother started Zip2, “a web software company that would help newspapers develop online city guides.”

Musk revolutionized online payments: he was a co-founder of a really famous online transfer service called PayPal–was initially called Zip2. In 2002, PayPal was bought by another big company called eBay for 1.5 billion dollars in stock, and Musk received 165 million dollars from eBay. Moreover, he is the CEO and CTO of SpaceX, one of the most famous space companies in the world, founded in 2002. SpaceX is a space company that does design, “ manufactures and launches advanced rockets and spacecraft with the goal of reducing space transportation costs and enabling the colonization of Mars.” He is also the CEO of Tesla, a car company that manufactures electric cars. One of its functions that make Tesla is very well-known is a featured called AutoPilot. He is known for the chairman of the Solar City which concentrates in solar energy services.  Currently, he is one of the most intelligent Engineers in the world because of his crazy ideas and mindsets.

All of his inventions are constantly changing the world. For example, Tesla is an environmentally friendly technology which it only required electricity in order to run the process. This means that Elon Musk wanted to end the use of gasoline because it has an immense effect in term of climate change. His private space company, SpaceX, is trying to find a livable planet for humans because he wanted to prevent the from overpopulated. Moreover, people don’t need to carry out their money to buy what they wish because people can use PayPal instead of the actual currency.

In the future, Elon plans to sent people to Mars by 2025 because he wants to colonize the planet and make it into a living place. He even wanted to create tunnels, a new future transportation system. To begin the project, Elon’s objective is to build a network of underground tunnels in LA that move cars on electric skates at the speed of 125 mph. In the next 20 years, cars will not have steering wheels, so they are able to go fully autonomous in the long-term. He even said that “Aircraft and ships and all other forms of transport will go fully electric. Not half electric, but fully electric.” I think these goals will be achievable for him since he is a crazy and intelligent inventor of the century.  

Elon Musk credits his success to three important steps. The first step is to focus on more than one field; when Musk was back in school, he majored in two areas: Art in Economics and Physics. Musk had been interested in space and rockets for so long that he spent a lot of his own time reading textbooks and consulted with experts about rocket science and engineer. “His ability to understand the details of space and SpaceX products helps to connect with staff and build better products.” Musk studies in many different fields; he is able to understand deeper principles, and applies the principles “ to their core specialty.” The second step, learn to transfer knowledge. When Musk was in school, he is known to read two books per day: science fiction, philosophy, religion, and programming. This allowed him to get exposed to a variety of subjects and principles. Third think different. Elon ambition was to introduce the world to new amazing technology that nobody has ever thought of before. For example, Musk and his space company, SpaceX, was able to create a self-landing rocket. This is the three steps that he took to become one of the most famous engineers in the world. In conclusion, I think he is the top ranking inventor of the century by introducing new inventions to the world.  

References:

https://www.biography.com/people/elon-musk-20837159

https://www.oakton.edu/students/8/iiliev5728/Final%20Progect/Elon_Musk_Biography.htm

https://www.investopedia.com/university/elon-musk-biography/elon-musk-success-story.asp

https://www.quora.com/What-has-Elon-Musk-achieved

https://www.investopedia.com/university/elon-musk-biography/elon-musk-early-life-and-education.asp

https://ecotechdaily.net/how-elon-musk-is-changing-the-world

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SAT Practice

In our math class, my classmates and I are working really hard to get prepared for the SAT test in October. We are doing a multitude of practices and finding techniques that are able to help us with the preparation. As I mentioned in the previous post, all of the Academy students were taken a two weeks long PSAT boot camp; however, we are still improving on the sections that we are struggling with. For example, one of the topics that some of the students are currently struggling with is the percentage change. We find it difficult with the percentage change word problems since we need to understand clearly about the context so that we can implement the formula to solve for the solution. To solve for the percentage change questions, first, we need to take the New value to subtract it to the Initial value, divide everything by the initial value and multiply it by 100.  

Percentage change = (New value – Initial value)/(Initial Value) = X * 100              

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PSAT Bootcamp

It was unusual to come back to school and started working on the PSAT Bootcamp. It was two weeks long, and we got to work with the two young professional tutors from the Princeton university—Amanda and Kim. I was so amazed by them because they taught us a multitude of strategies that we could implement into the real SAT test. I found out that reading was the most challenging part for me because it took too much time just to understand the meaning of the passage. Moreover, I will do the real SAT test in a few weeks; I’m so nervous and feared that I will not do a great job on the test, and I feel like the SAT test is a complex way of looking for university and scholarship.