waves

Four mechanical engineering students attending Cal Poly San Luis Obispo began a year-long journey in Fall 2020 to create an interactive, hands-on experience for the users of Bellevue Santa Fe Charter School’s SciTechatorium. Nestled in the hills of Avila Beach, California, the Bellevue Santa Fe Charter School (BCFCS) is a place where children and adults work together to create a safe, supportive, inspiring and challenging school community. The SciTechatorium is an on-campus museum filled with exhibits geared towards Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) concepts. Its main purpose, to be a place where students can explore the world around them through STEAM. During this project, the team of engineers sought out to embody the BCFCS motto: “What we learn with pleasure, we never forget.” The team tailored their project to complement current curriculum and existing exhibits; ultimately, deciding to build an oscylinderscope, a spinning drum that creates a strobe effect behind a set of guitar strings. This effect reveals vibration patterns in the strings after they are plucked.