I Wonder and Wonder Further

I wonder what my heating bill will be at this time next year when I have completed all the tasks detailed in a report I received from the School to Apprenticeship students in Mr. Harris' Science class. These students come back into school every two weeks for training in their programs and academic classes, including environmental science. Mr. Harris formed these students into a Home Energy Audit Team. The audit these students performed found many small things that I could do that would prevent heat loss and reduce the cost of my heating bills in the coming year.

David, the student in the picture, is examining the display on an infrared detector. The display shows an expanding blue line indicating cold air coming in above the sliding glass doors. David explained to me that a simple piece of foam inserted above the door would eliminate the blue line and prevent cold air coming in and the resulting heat loss. Thanks David, and thanks to all you HVAC, Electrical Trades, and Welding Program guys for coming together and providing this community service. I am glad I made it on your list of homes to visit.

I wonder further whether the hand-held infrared device used by David has an FPGA chip. What is an FPGA chip? An FPGA is an acronym that stands for Field Programmable Gate Array chip. This type of chip is programmable in the field, after it is manufactured. I just learned this myself today while visiting an online programming forum called Cemetek. Chris Mitchell, now a graduate student at New York University. Chris has offered to mentor Zach in his senior capstone project. Zach, when a junior, created programs in a TI-83 SE calculator, sometimes during class when maybe he should have been "on task" doing class assignments. I didn't know that TI's could be programmed until Zach came along and am amazed at the projects that Chris Mitchell has completed over the years.I look forward to what Zach works out with Chris and what I can continue to learn from the things that students throw open to me.