Barn Gang - This Tuesday

July 29
Planning New Systems for the USAF

presented by:
Joe Lusczek, Jr., Technical Director
Aerospace Systems Design and Analysis - WPAFB

Introduction by Walt Hoy

3D Digital Model

So far...

a work in progress.

Dr. Michele Wheatly to Speak on STEM

Science - Technology - Engineering - Math

An excerpt from Dr. Wheatly's speach given in September of 2007 provides some insight as to what will be presented at the Barn Gang on July 21.

There has been a growing national and regional
awareness that STEMM, long acknowledged for providing post WWII economic
prosperity, has become threatened by the STEMM competitiveness of other nations.
There is now serious concern about the lack of preparation and lack of interest
in students at all levels going into STEMM fields. This has been sensationalized
in both the popular press, for example, Thomas Friedman's best seller, "The
World is Flat" and the National Academies "Rising Above the Gathering Storm".
Technological and social shifts have leveled the economic world, enabling less
developed nations to compete with the United States for corporate investment and
jobs. For the first time since the Sputnik era, STEMM has become the focus of
the national agenda and conversation with The America Competes act authorizing
$43 billion dollars over 3 years for a plethora of math and science education,
research and development initiatives.
Following suit, the Ohio General
Assembly has recently made a historic investment in higher education,
appreciating that Ohio's competitiveness in the global economy is directly
related to the knowledge skills and creativity of our workforce. It is
anticipated that eighty percent of the students in Ohio who pursue higher
education will be educated in our public universities. WSU, therefore, is poised
to play a major role in growing the knowledge economy in the Dayton region
through State initiatives such as Turnaround Ohio, Third Frontier and most
recently "House Bill 119", better known as "the Ohio Innovation Partnership".
This latter program is a $250 million dollar investment in the next biennium to
make an unprecedented commitment to statewide STEMM education spanning from the
early childhood classroom to the university research laboratory. These
initiatives all point to the impetus to grow research in fields that will lead
to economic development, and to graduate more Ohioans with higher education
degrees particularly in the STEMM fields. Over the next few months Ohioans will
be galvanized by the media attention to these initiatives, and nowhere is this
more needed than the greater Dayton region.

The additional M is for Medicine.

Engineers Club in 3D on Google Earth

A 3D digital model of the Engineers Club is being created and will have multiple uses. One use is to place on Google Earth so a quality and proper representation can viewed along with the satellite image of Dayton.

Other uses can be in designing and presenting landscaping ideas. There is serious discussion of placing banners on or around the building to promote what the Engineers Club stands for in the community. We can actually place these banners in 3D and look at them from several angles.

This is a work in progress - and you can see the development of the model take place and the final installation on Google Earth.

This service is being provided free of charge.

John Fleischman to Speak July 24

John Fleischman -- Science Writer
Aviation Heritage Speaker Series
July 24, 2008, 7:00 pm

John Fleischman, who likes to write about science and has made a career out of it, will talk about his most recent book, Black & White Airmen: Their True History, at the Engineer s Club, 110 East Monument Avenue, Dayton, Thursday, July 24th at 7:00pm.

The Engineers Club s Cyber Pub will be open to the public prior to the presentation. Plan on an entire evening out by starting with dinner before hand. The evening menu consists of pub food such as mini burgers, turkey club and chicken wings. No reservations are required for the pub.

His newest non-fiction book for older children is titled Black & White
Airmen: Their True History, published last June. Fleischman says, It is about flying, WWII, segregation, and friendship. And it has a happy ending. Copies of this book will be for sale at the talk, and Fleischman will be available for booksignings.

Fleischman s first non-fiction book for older kids, Phineas Gage: A Gruesome But True Story About Brain Science, won many awards such as the Notable Children s Book and Best Book for Young Adults. Fleishman is working on his third nonfiction book for older children about animals that have won the Nobel Prize in Medicine (You thought only people won them?).

For more information about this talk and other future speakers coming to the Engineer s Club call Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park at 937.225.7705.

The Speakers Series is designed to offer the public a variety of knowledgeable speakers addressing topics related to aviation history through engaging discussion and often first-hand accounts. It is sponsored by the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park and the Engineers Club of Dayton. The Engineers Club is located at 110 East Monument Avenue, Dayton. This event is free and open to the public and seating is on a first come, first served basis.

Vision and the Wrights

The following is from an article I read in the Fall of 2003.

It is difficult to imagine the incredible changes that lay before the world
100 years ago at the outset of human flight. A taste of that time and of the
mental gymnastics through which it took a man’s mind were recorded in, of all
places, a beekeeping magazine. In the January 1, 1905, issue of Gleanings of Bee
Culture, Amos Root gave his account of the startling sight of an airplane in
flight:
“When it first turned that circle and came near the starting point, I
was right in front of it; and I said then, and I believe still, it was one of
the grandest sights, if not the grandest sight, of my life. Imagine a locomotive
that has left its track, and it is climbing up in the air right toward you—a
locomotive without any wheels, we will say, but with white wings instead. . . .
Well, now imagine that locomotive, with wings that spread 20 feet each way,
coming right toward you with a tremendous flap of its propellers, and you will
have something like what I saw. . . . I tell you friends, the sensation that one
feels in such a crisis is something hard to describe” (reported in Air &
Space/Smithsonian, March 2003).
Today, a century after those preliminary
flights of the Wright brothers’ Wright Flyer, the sight of an airplane hardly
turns a head. A dream that might have been dismissed over the millennia with the
assertion that “if God had meant man to fly, He would have given him wings,” has
become our commonplace reality.

From: "A Wright Mind", Vision Magazine, Fall - 2003