John U Free Seminar Series – Zoom Virtual Presentation – Friday March 27, 2020 at 4:30PM

Please join us on a Zoom Virtual Presentation of the Dr. John U. Free Physics & Engineering Seminar Series 2020 featuring faculty and Physics & Engineering senior research presentations. This series encourages collaboration and information sharing between programs and divisions and promotes an atmosphere that supports undergraduate research.

The URL to launch the Zoom Presentation is as follows:
https://encedu.zoom.us/j/703555909?pwd=aWR5Zkc3OWQ1NkJqMzN2bVNwYWN2UT09

The presentations scheduled for the March 27 installment of the series are as follows:

Welcome to the Era of Self-tuning Drums
by Kaleb Golden, BSc degree in Electrical Engineering Candidate

Tuning drums is one of the worst possible things you could ever have to endure as a drummer, it’s a time consuming, arduous process that takes precious time a drummer could be spending practicing, especially when the drummer has to change heads. The question is then, how do we keep the drum tuned and sounding exactly the way we want it to without having to do it ourselves? In this project, a system was developed that can actively search and detect the drum’s frequency and then tune the drum to a designated frequency range set by the user. For a problem of this sort, a hybrid research method was used that included both my own ideas, as well as already existing technology and resources. The proposed system uses the audio processing features with the Simple Audio Frequency Sensor library of an Arduino MKR1000, as well as a microphone chip to be able to detect the sound input. The system also uses a drum and a servo motor that attaches to the drum. The servo and drum system are interfaced with tuning rods for automatically tuning the drum to a drummer specified set of sounds (frequencies). The system was effectively tested using given resources and shown to achieve a range of user specified tuning frequencies. While the product is still very much in its prototyping phase, a patent is actively being applied for and will hopefully be fulfilled by late 2020. The contribution of this product to the field of music could revolutionize the way drums are manufactured for years to come.

A Real-Time Automated Fake News Detection System
by Sebastian Arboleda, BSc degree in Electrical Engineering Candidate

The spread of false and incomplete information is breaking our democracy, dividing our society, and jeopardizing our judgment. As a result, there has been a proliferation of fact-checking organizations, attempting to manually determine the veracity of online information. However, current methods are known to be time-consuming, expensive, and unscalable. Moreover, their evaluations often involve articles that have been widely consumed and shared by the time they are assessed. This project proposes to provide an automated fact-checking tool that can inform users of false or incomplete assumptions or claims within an article anywhere online and in a speedy manner. This new class of fact checking tool being proposed is a stepping stone towards a complete set of tools (web extensions, browser plug-ins, embedded scripts, etc.) that will help expose online misinformation at larger scale.