Okay so the last week or so I was at the University of Illinois, and got to spend a few hours in each of the engineering departments there. I figured I would post some of the things I saw there in one or two of the departments, because I know some of you might find it interesting.
So if you like to read, you should enjoy...
So first of all, I applied to go check everything out at UI since my parents went there and I'm being pushed really hard to get in (personally I hate it, and there's no way I can afford it, but thats not a worry for a year or two). Nationwide, they take 40 kids and you have to be a pretty good student to get in, I was banking on the fact I wasn't a 'great' student, so I wouldn't have to go.... That didn't happen.
But anyways, the info:
First of all, U of I's Computer Science is top of the line, highest regarded system in the country behind MIT. The Computer Engineering department is in the top 5, and the entire Engineering section is top 5. The only one of which that is a public school.
Computer Science Experience (What I want to do)
----------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, the newest building on the campus, and it is HUGE. They say its almost 100 million bucks, minus all the equiptment in it. Ah yes, the equiptment. I have never seen so many computers in my life. It was the most amazing site (or sight), well maybe besides the nuclear one (I'll tell you in a second), I've seen. These wernt just computers sitting there with nice monitors. These had high definition displays, a 15" touch pad mirroring the monitor, and the coolest thing about the classroom comps... At any point any of the screens could be put up onto the 12' projector at the front of the room, or more then one, and shown people's code, or artwork, or whatever.
As you go deeper into the geek convention, you find the robotic programming rooms, 3d VR rooms, and presentation studios with automatic triangulation tracking for automatic light affects and spotlight tracking.
The last thing we saw in this building was an early test that some Grad students were working on, which could drag different applications over to different machines, and display them on their machine. Now this isn't just your simple dragging between dual monitors. This is 20+ computers with different applications installed, able to drag their work to another, to all, or to the big projection in front of the room. - The coolest part of this? some of these Rendering programs are huge, and I don't no how they did it, but when they dragged over the applications (in seconds over the LAN), the programs didn't even have to be installed on the new comps to be played with! Imagine the power with that, and it was lightning fast, don't think these are small programs either.
Nuclear Engineering (Probably the coolest, but I'd never make it here)
---------------------------------------------------------------
First of all, say goodbye to Nuclear power. It may be good now, but it has too many negatives, like pollution, cost, and availiablity.
It's becomming to the time of Plasma. Plasma is far superior, it is amazing the potential it has, and to think you are shooting 'Plasma Rifles' in HALO or something. Now I don't know if we are going to be shooting plasma cannons at North Korea or something, but we won't be short from it.
See plasma energy is made from crushing two nucleii together, the opposite of fission, and a sister of fusion. The only problem is, to do this you need to have insane heat, that almost as much as the sun. This actually can and has been acheived, it's not as hard as you may think, since the heat is only applied to things less then .01 nanometers.
The negative? You can't touch them. If you touch the atoms, its catastrophic. You can't let the heat exscape, because it really can't be handled, and since heat = energy, the problem is how to we contain it? Well the answer goes way back... to the simple magnet. If you just have a magnet apply the force to push them together, you can crush them without touching them, since the magnet is a coil, and it's equil forces on all sides. Once the plasma is formed, you can then contain it, and the heat, since plasma is far more stable then one nucleus by itself, you don't have to keep it under high pressure or temperatures. It's a huge advantage, you can walk around with it in a ziplock bag if you really wanted to. That's how safe it is. You control it with electricity to make it work for you.
After we got the educational part, we saw how the magnet worked. And a magnet about 2' long and strung into a coil was able to shoot 5lbs of lead across the campus Aerodynamics Testing Landing, with under 1,000 Volts. It would take an extreme fraction of that to combine out atoms.
The first plasma plants are already built here in the USA, but they are testing facilities and are small. But, a full scale one is being built in Southern France as I type, and will have a input
utput powe ratio of 1:20, blowing away nuclear facilities. (The only reason to learn French!).
Seeing as I'm getting carried away... The coolest things we see in the lab?
- Plasma rung around a lead rod with low voltage, forming a constand 'lightening bolt' of electricity...through FREE AIR. That's right, you can control electricity through the air without wires.
- A Lightsaber formed with the plasma under high voltage. Yes, we turned off the lights and swung it around a little. We couldn't test the capabilities though, they wern't sure what would happen to anything touched directly to the heated system that was an outside variable.
- And the thing most pertaining to this forum? Here it is: Right now as you no we went from .13 micron defination chips to the recent 90nm chips. Plasma can make .25nm definition chips right now, they are using them in the lab. Imagine the capabilities with that? Granted they would probably only use like 20nm for our computers, but thats freaking amazing.
And the COOLEST THING I saw the entire time...
Since few colleges have funding to show the inside of the power plants, UI took on the step of making a VR simulation of one. They've hooked up a 12' by 9' High Dif 'Thinscreen' with dual projectors (said to be $25,000 each) shooting different polorizations onto the screen. They were each controled by one of the GTX's they had in SLI for the system. By doing the different polorizations, we got to see it in 3d. Put on some wd glasses, grabbed a PS2 controller, and walked through the place.
And then... The supervisor left. Knowing we were a bunch of computer nerd, the leader we had rebooted the system, gave us our choice of Quake or Doom3. We choose doom.... I almost shit myself.
I was scared shitless, playing that game on a huge screen in virtual realatity on 3D was... I kid you not... F-ING UNBELIEVABLE.
Computer Engineering
---------------------------------
Well this is a cool field. But the only thing that I am going to type about now is the old Intel processing room.
Controlled at 1,000 Parts Per Million, and with yellow light (to rule out the UV), this is where Intel used to manufacture their top-line prototypes. We were not given an estimate on the value of the room let alone the building. We wern't allowed in of course, but I wish I was so I had some pictures.
Anyways, if you actually read this, awesome. If you're still young and have choices to be made: Look into Plasma, it truly is the future of power sources, and possibly the solution to our energy crisis.
So if you like to read, you should enjoy...
So first of all, I applied to go check everything out at UI since my parents went there and I'm being pushed really hard to get in (personally I hate it, and there's no way I can afford it, but thats not a worry for a year or two). Nationwide, they take 40 kids and you have to be a pretty good student to get in, I was banking on the fact I wasn't a 'great' student, so I wouldn't have to go.... That didn't happen.
But anyways, the info:
First of all, U of I's Computer Science is top of the line, highest regarded system in the country behind MIT. The Computer Engineering department is in the top 5, and the entire Engineering section is top 5. The only one of which that is a public school.
Computer Science Experience (What I want to do)
----------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, the newest building on the campus, and it is HUGE. They say its almost 100 million bucks, minus all the equiptment in it. Ah yes, the equiptment. I have never seen so many computers in my life. It was the most amazing site (or sight), well maybe besides the nuclear one (I'll tell you in a second), I've seen. These wernt just computers sitting there with nice monitors. These had high definition displays, a 15" touch pad mirroring the monitor, and the coolest thing about the classroom comps... At any point any of the screens could be put up onto the 12' projector at the front of the room, or more then one, and shown people's code, or artwork, or whatever.
As you go deeper into the geek convention, you find the robotic programming rooms, 3d VR rooms, and presentation studios with automatic triangulation tracking for automatic light affects and spotlight tracking.
The last thing we saw in this building was an early test that some Grad students were working on, which could drag different applications over to different machines, and display them on their machine. Now this isn't just your simple dragging between dual monitors. This is 20+ computers with different applications installed, able to drag their work to another, to all, or to the big projection in front of the room. - The coolest part of this? some of these Rendering programs are huge, and I don't no how they did it, but when they dragged over the applications (in seconds over the LAN), the programs didn't even have to be installed on the new comps to be played with! Imagine the power with that, and it was lightning fast, don't think these are small programs either.
Nuclear Engineering (Probably the coolest, but I'd never make it here)
---------------------------------------------------------------
First of all, say goodbye to Nuclear power. It may be good now, but it has too many negatives, like pollution, cost, and availiablity.
It's becomming to the time of Plasma. Plasma is far superior, it is amazing the potential it has, and to think you are shooting 'Plasma Rifles' in HALO or something. Now I don't know if we are going to be shooting plasma cannons at North Korea or something, but we won't be short from it.
See plasma energy is made from crushing two nucleii together, the opposite of fission, and a sister of fusion. The only problem is, to do this you need to have insane heat, that almost as much as the sun. This actually can and has been acheived, it's not as hard as you may think, since the heat is only applied to things less then .01 nanometers.
The negative? You can't touch them. If you touch the atoms, its catastrophic. You can't let the heat exscape, because it really can't be handled, and since heat = energy, the problem is how to we contain it? Well the answer goes way back... to the simple magnet. If you just have a magnet apply the force to push them together, you can crush them without touching them, since the magnet is a coil, and it's equil forces on all sides. Once the plasma is formed, you can then contain it, and the heat, since plasma is far more stable then one nucleus by itself, you don't have to keep it under high pressure or temperatures. It's a huge advantage, you can walk around with it in a ziplock bag if you really wanted to. That's how safe it is. You control it with electricity to make it work for you.
After we got the educational part, we saw how the magnet worked. And a magnet about 2' long and strung into a coil was able to shoot 5lbs of lead across the campus Aerodynamics Testing Landing, with under 1,000 Volts. It would take an extreme fraction of that to combine out atoms.
The first plasma plants are already built here in the USA, but they are testing facilities and are small. But, a full scale one is being built in Southern France as I type, and will have a input
utput powe ratio of 1:20, blowing away nuclear facilities. (The only reason to learn French!).Seeing as I'm getting carried away... The coolest things we see in the lab?
- Plasma rung around a lead rod with low voltage, forming a constand 'lightening bolt' of electricity...through FREE AIR. That's right, you can control electricity through the air without wires.
- A Lightsaber formed with the plasma under high voltage. Yes, we turned off the lights and swung it around a little. We couldn't test the capabilities though, they wern't sure what would happen to anything touched directly to the heated system that was an outside variable.
- And the thing most pertaining to this forum? Here it is: Right now as you no we went from .13 micron defination chips to the recent 90nm chips. Plasma can make .25nm definition chips right now, they are using them in the lab. Imagine the capabilities with that? Granted they would probably only use like 20nm for our computers, but thats freaking amazing.
And the COOLEST THING I saw the entire time...
Since few colleges have funding to show the inside of the power plants, UI took on the step of making a VR simulation of one. They've hooked up a 12' by 9' High Dif 'Thinscreen' with dual projectors (said to be $25,000 each) shooting different polorizations onto the screen. They were each controled by one of the GTX's they had in SLI for the system. By doing the different polorizations, we got to see it in 3d. Put on some wd glasses, grabbed a PS2 controller, and walked through the place.
And then... The supervisor left. Knowing we were a bunch of computer nerd, the leader we had rebooted the system, gave us our choice of Quake or Doom3. We choose doom.... I almost shit myself.
I was scared shitless, playing that game on a huge screen in virtual realatity on 3D was... I kid you not... F-ING UNBELIEVABLE.
Computer Engineering
---------------------------------
Well this is a cool field. But the only thing that I am going to type about now is the old Intel processing room.
Controlled at 1,000 Parts Per Million, and with yellow light (to rule out the UV), this is where Intel used to manufacture their top-line prototypes. We were not given an estimate on the value of the room let alone the building. We wern't allowed in of course, but I wish I was so I had some pictures.
Anyways, if you actually read this, awesome. If you're still young and have choices to be made: Look into Plasma, it truly is the future of power sources, and possibly the solution to our energy crisis.
