To boost our energy, we bought some dry ice to play with.





After playing around, we decided to do an art project with the dry ice. We mixed some yellow paint with the water and added the dry ice. Unfortunately, the bottle was too strong and did not explode. we will do more experiments tomorrow.

Today

In the tour, students learnt what it means to "cogenerate." Cogeneration is the simultaneous generation of two or more types of energy from a single fuel source. Through cogeneration, the plant generates electrical and thermal power simultaneously by utilizing the waste heat from a 20-megawatt gas turbine to generate steam. This technology is approximately 18% more efficient and reduces emissions by 45% compared to the technology it replaced. The gas turbine uses primarily natural gas (and occasionally distillate and heavy fuel oil). The facility provides electricity, steam heat, and chilled water (air conditioning) to more than 100 MIT buildings.



Since one of the teams in the studio is designing and building a solar-powered scooter, we also visited the shop of the



At the shop, the students examined the base chassis of Eleanor. The students were impressed by the lightweight frame that does 90 mph on the road and is packed with technology that will eventually make its way to hybrids and EVs we will see on the roads ourselves. The MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team draws on a broad range of technical knowledge from all fields of engineering and science and is dedicated to promoting alternatively powered vehicles.

Week 1 of Session 2 in NuVu's Summer term is wrapping up. The students formed teams and started working on their final projects.

We would like to invite you for the presentation of the final projects for Session 2! The presentations will start at 1 pm on Friday, August 2nd. Details are available at eventbrite: http://nuvuaug2.eventbrite.com
Kindly RSVP.

Please don’t hesitate to spread the word about NuVu. There are still a few openings for Session 3 (http://bit.ly/session3_). We are also offering sessions during the school year (http://bit.ly/Fall2013_).

On Friday, NuVu's students presented their projects to a full house.

Many thanks to the parents of our Teens in Session 1 for turning up in such large numbers. We appreciate all your support.

Saba has put together a slideshow of Friday's events. Enjoy it!

Diallo and Chris working on their project. After failing to install their project in two different rooms because maintenance did not approve, they decided to install the project in our studio room.

Here is Nicky and David calibrating their vision system. They really struggled to get their vision fast enough so it can detect a flying paper airplane. Rather than using the built-in video camera, they got a fast webcam with better drivers. Currently the system is able to process 25 frames/second.

Here is Jake, Luke, and Henry getting help from Eric with some Processing stuff. The guys did an amazing job getting their system working. They also ripped off the whole chair to setup their LED's on top.



Vanessa and Hayley are painting their city backdrop. They spent a long time figuring out all the details of the cityscape.

Day 3 of Genius Camp began with some deep discussion spurred by the TED Talks the students had selected to share with the studio. The conversations brought to light the diverse vantage points we have represented in the studio as well as how each topic discussed can be addressed in a variety of ways. We then moved onto the final round (for the week) of the Marshmallow Challenge. After having some time to discuss and plan out a strategy for constructing a spaghetti tower able to support a marshmallow at the top, the teams bolted to begin implementing their design-build strategies within the 18-minute time limit.



Here Team Blue Steel shows their sketches and plans for designing the tallest tower given the limited resources of 20 spaghetti sticks. They also put their project management skills to work to distribute the construction work between the three team members.

The planning and building coordination proved succesful as Team Blue Steel managed to build a strong spaghetti tower at a height of 45"!

Here is Team Cobra's interesting use of tape for structural support.

The final height board shows it all. From the first iteration to this fourth iteration of the challenge, the students definitely learnt how to construct a more robust and taller structure AND managed to implement their design ideas successfully as a team!

In the afternoon, students had a chance to meet and chat with a few of the Fall studio coaches and ask them questions about fusion energy, space mining, and alternate sci-fi realities. Invited guests Edith Ackerman and Akra Aksamija also offered overall feedback on the studios.

Yesterday we headed to MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. We started the tour by looking at real Plasma and how a magnetic field can change the direction of it.

This is the room that houses the fusion reactor.

Here is a one-to-one model of the screw that holds the reactor together. 3 of these screws can hold a spaceship to the ground.

NuVu-Bangalore Studio's first Session Studios (Space Vehicles & Mining + Interactive Storybook) and students were featured on TV9 News this past Thursday.  It was a great end to our first Session of the NuVu-Bangalore Studio and we are looking forward to the upcoming Session!

This fantastic film piece was produced by our winter term students. The film captures the students' twelve week experience at NuVu as they explored thought-provoking ideas and projects through "Storytelling." The production team for the film included Izzy English, Ginny Hollingsworth, and Nandini Srinivasan. The team worked tirelessly on the film for the last three weeks of the term to have it ready for the premier at the NuVu Winter Exhibit last Saturday. Enjoy!

Today marked the first day of the film studio taught by Alla Kovgan. We started the day by going around the table and talking about the films we like and why we like them. Alla then showed us some of her films and talked about the ideas and processes behind them. She also talked about her evolution as a film maker.