Hannah Learns to Make Almost Anything
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follow along as I learn in How To Make (Almost) Anything.
About Hannah
I am a first year PhD student in the chemistry department. My academic background is in environmental chemistry and geochemistry.
Most of my research history has been in "wet labs"--the classic ideas of mixing various substances together and afterwards,
analyzing the results. However, my work here at MIT is in astrochemistry, which explores the junctions of astronomy and chemistry
in an attempt to better understand fundamental laws of our universe and its out of this world chemistry. Using everything from spectroscopy to machine learning
to astronomical observations, my work aims to expand our understanding of our place in the universe.
I think of myself currently as a
bit of a jack-of-all-trades. I have almost no experience in design, electronics and "creating" in general. This was the class that introduced
the idea of "fabrication" and modular machines to me at all.
This class is certainly going to be a challenge for me, as my primary experience with "making" is in needle/fabric work.
I've done some bread-board soldering type electronic work (mostly connecting existing, working parts)
before in my previous physical chemistry labs in 2018 but have never
had to design any sort of novel electronic system myself. In fact, I've never used or even heard of
any form of CAD, concepts of fabrication, the differentiation between
"embedded programming" and "regular" programming, or really most of the topics covered in this class. I am constantly
impressed and inspired by my class mates, and I hope that another beginner maker like myself
can see my site as helpful in kind of a "I have no idea what I'm doing, but here goes nothing" for this course.
As someone who came in with little to none of the skills my classmates had, I hope that my pages can go onto explain the things
that seem obvious to those with extensive design or EECS background. The learning curve for me was extremely high every week,
but it meant I learned a lot! This course has primarily taught me about the concepts of fabrication,
using exact computer-aided designs and truly taught me the language I might need for any future fablab endeavours I may have.
