Simulation and fabrication of ingenious mechanisms

That is the title of the seminar I will be leading at Sprout. Sprout is a hacker space founded by three MIT graduates (Nagle, Shaunalynn, and Alec) in Somerville, Massachusetts. For more information see their website. If you live around the area you must check this place out. I found it when I was looking for a place for my son to work on some electronics projects. One of the unique aspects of this place is their eclectic approach to education and technology. You will find a place to fabricate your plans into hard matter and more importantly someone to help you or work with you in almost any field. Wonderful place wonderful people.

The seminar is going to be about simulation, mostly simulation of mechanisms but depending on the participants' backgrounds and interest areas we will be covering a lot of other topics as well. We will look at the simulation process as a vehicle to help us go from math/physics to physical objects. Mekanimo will be our main tool for computer simulation. I will cover the basics of Mekanimo at the beginning of the seminar. We will be using the book How Round is Your Circle as our guide. This is a very interesting and unique book that I enjoyed reading. It will provide us a starting point but where we may end up is going to be up to the participants.

We will be frequently visiting problem solving methodology and computing as well. Learning from failure is going to be another hot topic. Anyone who simulated a process/product and then physically built them could tell you how things almost never work as planned. To be able to identify the reason why it didn't, we need to thoroughly understand the topic at hand. I think failures are opportunities for deep level understanding.

If this sounds interesting to you then join us.