alexandra-stephenson

[Music plays and images of award participants flash by on screen. Text appears: BHP Billiton Science and Engineering Awards 2017]

[Image changes to show Alexandra Stephenson sitting on a chair and playing the cello]

[Image changes to show Alexandra seated and smiling at the camera]

Alexandra Stephenson: My name’s Alexandra Stephenson and I live in Aldgate in South Australia and I had two projects in this year’s competition. One’s called the The Tack Collector,

[Camera moves to show the Tack Collector, which is a small robotic looking device]

and the other one was called Vibration Damping on the cello, by cello mutes.

[Camera moves to show the device being placed on to a cello]

[Image changes back to show the Tack Collector]

The Tack Collector is a robot that moves around a room picking up pins and other small metal objects using this magnetic collecting unit,

[Image changes to show Alexandra seated and holding the Tack Collector and pointing to the different parts as she explains below]

it has an ultra-sonic sensor which feeds back to the Arduino board in there, which controls the whole robot.

[Image changes to show Alexandra placing the Tack Collector on the floor and then moves back to show Alexandra seated and talking the camera whilst holding the Tack Collector]

I’m a member of the Lace Guild of South Australia and I’ve been to some workshops there and saw that people often accidently drop the pins, so I designed this robot to pick them up.

[Image changes to show the Tack Collector moving along the floor]

Some of the difficulties I had were that the robot would sometimes turnaround in the middle of the room with no obstacle there, so I wrote some code to work out what the ultra-sonic sensor was reading,

[Image changes to show Alexandra seated and holding the Tack Collector]

and sometimes it would read zero when it wasn’t actually a zero.

[Image changes to show Alexandra seated and playing the cello]

I play the cello and I wanted to know how a little mute could change the sound quality of the cello.

[Image changes to show Alexandra seated and talking to the camera whilst holding the a cello mute]

And I found that a heavy mute made of a stiff and dense material, damped more frequencies than a light mute that was more compliant and less dense.

[Image changes back to show Alexandra seated and playing the cello]

As there are quite a few different mutes on the market I wanted to know whether each of these mutes had different effects, and if so, how they had their different effects.

People who would benefit most from my research would be musicians and people in music shops who could advise musicians on what mutes would be best.

[Image changes to show Alexandra seated and talking to the camera]

One of the things I found the most difficult was learning about statistical tests so I could analyse my data correctly.

[Image changes to show Alexandra sitting on a couch and arranging some crochet items beside her]

As well as doing science projects and building robots and stuff, I also enjoy playing in a music ensemble with my friends, going to Red Cacao, the local chocolatier, which is great.

[Image changes to show Alexandra sitting and crocheting]

Watching cute little fairy-wrens in our garden, lace making, crocheting, knitting, going to music concerts, doing visual art things and visiting the art gallery.

I probably always want to know how things work and make things and stuff like that. I would like to, once I’ve finish school, go to uni to study something like robotics engineering, but something in a STEM area,

[Image has changed back to show Alexandra seated and talking to the camera]

and I’d like to do something that combines the theoretical and practical aspects of STEM areas.

[Image changes to show Alexandra seated and playing the cello]

For example, origami and kirigami are being used in making foldable solar panels and bendable electronics; I’d like to be able to do something like that,

[Image has changed back to show Alexandra seated and talking to the camera]

that includes my interest in lace making, crocheting and knitting.

[Music plays and text appears: BHP Billiton Science and Engineering Awards 2017]

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