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  News and Notes from the November 13, 2007 SPS meeting


www.freerice.com Feed the world and increase your vocabulary!
If you can guess the synonym correctly to the word
given, they will donate 10 grains of rice to the UN to attempt to
eradicate world hunger.  It is in the format of the general GRE, so maybe
one could chose to study their vocab for a good cause...plus, it's very
addictive...


Public observing.  There were enough people to man the scopes.  The comet
is now a "big dust cloud."


The Nucleus.  We have been the featured SPS group on their website! 
www.compadre.org/student/


T-shirts.  The order forms are kind-of ready.  We might be tweaking the
front design a little bit more.  We are offering the T-shirt for $10, a
long sleeve for $12, and the Shift Happens hoodie again for $25.  The
shirts will be offered in black, navy, forest, deep pink, and red.  Are
there any other suggestions for colors?  Think about placing your orders
before November 27th.


Public Service Opportunities.  Sleeping outside in boxes for homelessness
awareness week?  Let Dr. B know if you are interested in participating. 
We can make Christmas cards for wounded Vets at Walter Reed Hospital. 
There has been talk of bringing in computer software to print off the
cards and to bring in supplies to make your own.  We would like to have
them done by December 7th so they have time to get mailed out and received
before Christmas.  Once Dr. B brings in supplies (remind him...often) we
will schedule a crafting time.


Bakken Museum.  We've decided that this will have to wait until after
Thanksgiving.  Dr. Vonk has an engineering friend who is coming in to do a
talk the Thursday after Thanksgiving at 3pm.  We could go after that.  The
museum is open until 8, and Lee said it takes about 2 hours to get through
the entire thing.


Rocket Competition.  We have 43 teams signed up.  We're looking for 17mph
gusts of wind Thursday...if they go above 20 we abort mission.  Our launch
times range from 10am-2pm.  Ann will contact Kurran about possibly using
the intramural fields.  We could use a few more volunteers to sign up to
help out.  Has Chuck gotten any further with de-coding the code?  Remind
him.  Chris has been doing a lot of work with the launch system to get it
ready.  We've decided to record the data for later analysis at the launch
site, unless some decoding gets done first...maybe.


Pre-engineering update.  There was more talk of their formal event that
will be happening this Spring.


Demo.  We went outside to play with the tracking devices to see how
efficiently they will work for tracking the actual rockets.


An efficient meeting!  25 minutes...a record this year!

Minutes taken by Jen


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