Idaho Society of Professional Engineers
Friday Update - 03/12/04
UPCOMING EVENTS:
● ISPE Southwest Chapter Luncheon, Tuesday,
March 16, 2004, 12:00 Noon, Burger N Brew, Speaker: Lou Riepl, INEEL, Topic:
INEEL: It's Future, and Opportunities for Idaho
● Continuing Education Seminar, Design of
Waste Containment and Closure Systems, BSU, March 24, 2004, For additional
information: Call Joseph Sener, College of Engineering, Civil Engineering
Department, at 208-426-4814 or visit their web site at
http://coen.boisestate.edu/ssgmsd/home.htm
● IBPEPLS Board Meeting, April 30 and May
1, 2004
● NSPE 2004 Convention and Expo, July 8 -
10, 2004, Honolulu, Hawaii
National Call for Judges
The University of Central Florida 's College of Engineering and Computer
Science, administrator of the Internet Science and Technology Fair (ISTF at
http://istf.ucf.edu/), is seeking practicing
professionals who would be interested in participating as on-line judges for the
national round of judging of our annual program. This is the seventh year of the
ISTF competition and 230 elementary, middle and high school student teams
enrolled from 12 states and two countries. Participating student teams use only
IT tools to research and apply technology to real world problems, locate
scientists and engineers as team technical advisors and adhere to content
guidelines based on national science content standards. Last week, 160 teams
submitted their final project web sites for judging.
From April 16th through the 25th, interested persons who have expertise related
to the National Critical Technologies (at
http://istf.ucf.edu/Tools/NCTs/)
and are comfortable using a computer and the Internet, will be asked to judge
six student teams' final projects on-line. It takes approximately 20 minutes to
judge one team. All the necessary instructions, forms and project sites will be
provided on-line. We will be involved in a preliminary round of judging through
March and expect 50 teams or more to make it to the final round of judging in
April.
If you might be interested in participating, please contact Bruce Furino,
Director, Office of Special Programs, College of Engineering and Computer
Science, University of Central Florida, E-mail:
Director@istf.ucf.edu, Phone: (407)
249-7141
Enjoy Solving Ethical Conundrums? Try This Contest
Is a blemish on your engineering resume important enough to tell a potential new
employer about when applying for a new job? For PEs, such a situation can raise
a number of ethical questions. This situation is also the scenario presented in
the 2004 Milton F. Lunch Ethics Contest, which is accepting entries through
April 9. Go to
http://www.nspe.org/ethics/eh5-con.asp to read the contest
scenario and all the details. The winning entry will be recognized in
"Engineering Times," and NSPE state societies and chapters will receive an award
of $500, provided by the NSPE Educational Foundation.
Learn More About How You Can Use the NSPE Logo
NSPE encourages members of good standing in the "Licensed Member" and "Member"
categories to use the NSPE logo on personal and business stationery and business
cards as an expression of their membership in NSPE. (Student members not
eligible.) The NSPE logo can be used in a tasteful, professional manner on
business cards, at the bottom of business letterhead, or under your signature on
personal or business correspondence. Widespread use of the logo can also
increase public awareness of the contributions of PEs to society. The logo may
not be used to imply an endorsement
of a firm or organization by NSPE. To download instructions for use, see
http://www.nspe.org/insignia/home.asp.
MATHCOUNTS PROBLEM OF THE WEEK
Can you solve this MATHCOUNTS problem? The answer will appear in next week's
edition of the Friday Update!
Local Winners Head to State Competitions
The month of February was an exciting one for MATHCOUNTS! All across the
country, students from more that 6000 middle schools participated in local
MATHCOUNTS competitions, with the highest-scoring teams and individuals
advancing to state competitions during the month of March. Here’s a peek at some
of the problems these Mathletes tackled at the local competitions. For
MATHCOUNTS competitions, the average time allotted per question is 1 min 20 sec
for Sprint, 3 min for Target, 2 min for Team and no more than 45 seconds for
Countdown (but you have to beat your opponent’s time!). Good Luck!
Sprint #8: Place a digit 0 through 9 in each blank so the equation below is
true. What is the sum of the six digits you placed in the blanks? ( _ 6 _ , 3 _
1) – (7 6 , _ 3 5) = ( _ 9 , 2 8 _ )
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Target #2: Marsha adds all but one of the first ten positive integers. Her sum
is a square number. Which one of the first ten positive integers did Marsha not
include?
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Team #3: Ramon sells two enchiladas and three tacos for $2,50 and he sells three
enchiladas and two tacos for $2.70. Assuming a fixed price per item, what is the
cost, in dollars, of three enchiladas and four tacos? Express your answer as a
decimal to the nearest hundredth.
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Countdown #16: What is the least prime factor of 74 - 73?
Answer to last week's problem:
We need to solve the equation 5931 = 0.623x. Dividing both sides by 0.623 gives
us that there are approximately 38,100 students registered for MATHCOUNTS this
year.
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We could use the proportion (550/11) = (5931/x), where x is the number of
schools only registering individuals. Then our final answer would be 5931 + x.
Alternately, we could solve the proportion (561/550) = (x/5931), where x is the
total number of schools registered for MATHCOUNTS. If we multiply both sides by
5931, we see that there are 6050 schools registered for MATHCOUNTS.
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Notice that 8.5 × 2 = 17, and we have the 8.5 side corresponding to 1.7 inches.
It appears that we have multiplied 8.5 by 2 and then divided by 10. Performing
the same operations on the 11-inch side, we get 11 × 2 ÷ 10 = 2.2 inches.
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You may or may not have learned about some trigonometry. Since we are working
with an isosceles triangle, the altitude from the vertex angle B divides the
base AC in half and divides the isosceles triangle into two right triangles. Now
using our trig ratios we can find the degree measure of angle A with (cos A) =
15/20, which results in angle A measuring 41 degrees.
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Though we don’t know ahead of time how many of the competitors will be males or
females, we do know that there will either be an even number of both, or an odd
number of both. If there is an even number of both, then we would only need 228
÷ 2 = 114 rooms. However, if there is an odd number, then you might think we’d
need some extra rooms. Notice, however, that an odd number of girls and an odd
number of boys will only lead to needing one additional room. Therefore, the
greatest number of rooms that would be necessary under these guidelines is 115.
If you want to see last week's problem again, click on
http://www.mathcounts.org/Queries/POW_Archive.taf?_function=detail&Q_A_uid1=484&_UserReference=1C0B4135F6E13076404F562E
Idaho Society of Professional Engineers
PO Box 170239
Boise, ID 83717-0239
208-426-0636
Fax: 208-426-0639
E-Mail: ispe@rmci.net
Web Site: www.Idahospe.org
Idaho
Society of Professional Engineers
