Pizza Lab

Last week in EGR-150, we split into two teams, back row vs. front row, and conducted a lab based on ordering pizza. I was on a team with Lia, Cameron, and Jordan. Our goal was to create a WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) and a Gantt Chart to determine how long it would take us to complete all the steps in ordering pizza. There are some pictures below to show you our work!

These two pictures show our WBS, Schedule, and Gantt Chart. We thought of eight steps to take when ordering pizza. For each step we estimated how long it would take to complete and whether it was a milestone, critical path or both. A milestone is a road sign that measures progress towards completion. We decided that choosing the restaurant, finding the number, placing the order, picking up the pizza, driving back and actually eating the pizza were all milestones! A critical path is something that must be done before another task can be completed. We marked all of our steps besides eating the pizza as a milestone. In the chart, everything colored purple is an activity, everything marked blue is a milestone, and everything marked green is a task. The difference between a task and an activity is that an activity is more of a category of different tasks. All together we predicted the whole assignment would take an hour. However, we had a bit of a problem. Only one person showed to class Wednesday from team one, Robert. We invited him to our team and used his WBS instead of ours. They included much more steps and took much more time so we figured it would be more fun to do!

We definitely devoured the pizza once we got it! I thoroughly enjoyed this lab and it really helped me to understand how to do a WBS and Gantt chart! Thank you to everyone who contributed to the price of the pizza and a special thanks to Lia for driving!

Regional Aviation and Technical Training Center

On March 4^th our EGR150 class took a trip to the RATTS Lab in Currituck. Until that day, I had no idea what this place was all about. I’ve never really been interested in airplanes or any type of machinery, but after the trip I was definitely amused! There are a few pictures below so you can get a feel as to how our trip was!

The first picture I took was in the first room we toured. This room stores about 3-4 airplanes that need any mechanical work done to them. I took a picture of this specific plane because of the COA emblem on the tail, and of course our school colors!

The second picture I have is of a room filled with manually operated machines. Here, students learn how to manually operate these machines before graduating to the computer-operated machines.

In the same room their oldest machine is held, a lathe. A lathe is a machine shapes parts of a material. Usually metal.

Next we saw the Maxiem Waterjet machine. This was very interesting to me because I never knew you could cut metals with water! This machine uses a grainy, sand-like substance and mixes it with water to cut through a variety of materials.

Finally we got to see a 3D printer in action! This was my favorite part of the whole tour. After all the buzz about these printers, I finally got to see one do it’s job. The first picture is the software you download to your computer. With this software you can design and customize your product. Although the video is a bit short, you can see the printer shaping the plastic into the design on the computer screen!

I thoroughly enjoyed our trip! I had so much fun and I learned a lot of cool new things! Plus, the bathrooms were awesome. ;)