Latest Developments

The last couple weeks have been kind of hectic!!!  We had spring break, a snow storm that canceled class for a day and half, meeting with a professor to get some more ideas about how to take our project to the next level.  It has also been a couple week since we have given an updated on our progress.

Our group is working on taking our project to the next level, as in trying to figure out our end of the semester project presentation an audience.  We talked to one professor in the JMU Political Science Department, who told us that we had a good idea going but to get our point across we need to find that the overall story to do that. The person that we talked to gave us the name of one more potential professor that we could try to get in contact with that deals more in American Politics and might have some more guiding questions we can answer.

We were also put in contact with a professor from the JMU History Department that said that she would love to talk us and maybe have some potential ideas for the final presentation.  With the hectic last couple of week we have had, we have yet to meet up with her to discuss anything further.

Our plan this week is to finally meet up with the history professor and talk with her about our project and starting to come up with the over all story for the project so that we can finish the semester strong!

Printing

The image below is a print that we recreated from a print that was posted on Thingiverse that was posted by Ed (username: edabot). In combination with our election data and our volume map with can correlate the maps together to see similarities and differences between the 3D prints.

Bonus project idea

As bonus project, we got as to what other maps we could print.  After searching Google a little we came across the NASA database of that includes the satellite images of hurricanes that can be 3D printed! HOW COOL?!?!  We decided to do a print of Hurricane Katrina using the NASA satellite imagery.  The image below is what the result of a 2D image turned into 3D print.

We came up with the thought of printing more hurricanes from the database that cane be used as a 3D teaching tool that can be used to study the patterns of hurricanes.  These can also be used in the future when a hurricane begins to form then similarities can be found to determine how strong the hurricane might be, or what its impact might be.

More information on 3D printing hurricanes can be found on 3Dprint.com.