CONTENTS
- Freshman Year
- Sophomore Year
- Junior Year
- Senior Year
Freshman Year (2016.9 - 2017.9)
XJTU Robocon team
I was a team member of the XJTU Robocon team (2016). The objective of this team was to compete and win the ABU-Robocon contest. The general goal of the 2016 contest was throwing as much disks onto the platforms as possible, as two teams compete in a match, the one with higher score wins (details).
During my participation in the Robocon team, I was assigned tasks concerning the design and test of new mechanical structures that could help achieving the goal of the general contest. To be specific, I designed a special mechanism that utilizes its rotation momentum to throw a disk, although it was not included in the final solution for precision issues, it works smoothly and efficiently. The reasons are that the vertically thrown disk is likely to scroll down the platform instead of staying on it, and due to the asymmetry shape of the disk (top and bottom side), when thrown vertically, the disk tends to veer off course to the “top” side since it provides more aerodynamical lift.
The mechanism I designed, rendered by SolidWorks
Another piece of work worth mentioning during my participation in the team is the computer vision program I made for experiment. The program, utilizing light-flow technique, could precisely locate moving objects. This program is part of the attempt to make the procedure of throwing the disk fully automatic. In detail, the robot have to face uncertain environment such as unpredictable temperature and air pressure during a certain match. In order to adjust the coefficients for a more precise aim, the robot have to be able to learn from the previous course of the disk, which requires a precise measurement of the previous thrown disk’s course. This program is not included in the final solution because the team decided to take manual control for the best possible result.
Real-world test of this CV program.
CUPT Vacuum Bazooka contest
I took part in the 2016 CUPT (China Undergraduate Physics Tournament, Chinese Version of IYPT). My team chose the problem “Vacuum Bazooka”, this problem concerns the procedure of a ping-pong ball being accelerated by air pressure produced by a device called “Vacuum bazooka” (details). During the research, I designed and constructed a transparent acrylic equipment that reproduces the mechanism of the vacuum bazooka, and conducted corresponding measurements based on this piece of equipment. I recorded the firing procedure and used the same computer vision program previously developed for the ABU-Robocon contest to pinpoint and measure the acceleration of the ping-pong ball.
There are serval things that are remarkable in regard to my personal learning during this research. Firstly, I learned to build special equipments that could help my research in a certain way. To be specific, by utilizing transparent materials, I can better understand and measure what’s happening inside the vacuum pipe, which is very crucial but could be otherwise difficult to reveal. Secondly, I learned and practiced to utilize the power of computers to help handling massive amount of data produced by modern experiment equipments. I believe, in addition to the award earned in this contest, such learnings could be very helpful for my future researches.
3D model of the instrument rendered by SolidWorks
The detailed report can be viewed here (Chinese).
Sophomore Year (2017.9 - 2018.9)
LBNL ATLAS Affiliate
I affiliated in the LBNL ATLAS team in spring 2018 semester. During the affiliation, I was assigned the task to build a monitoring system that constantly captures the environment status and upload it to a website. This system has been used in the development of the new generation sensor chip for the LHC detector.
I have made a report on the group meeting about this system, and the original PDF can be viewed here. I have also made a clone of the website, demonstrating the functionalities of the system. The website is not connected to an active experiment environment, so it has no live data stream fed in. There is also a static webpage showcasing the evolvements during the development.
This experience is really a meaningful and crucial one for me. During the affiliation, I got a lot of chances to communicate with researchers in English, which brought significant improvements to my communicating abilities, especially in English. Additionally, by joining a research team, I have a more in-depth view of the way people cooperate in researches, which could better prepare me for my future study and research.
UCAS Summer School
This summer school was held by the high-energy physics division of UCAS. During the summer school, we were shown the most recent advances in the researches, and were guided to visit the site of BSRF. It also worth mention that, there were also lectures introducing high performance cloud computing with root language. We were also given access to the cloud computing platform on campus.
There was an assignment before we complete the summer school program. I processed the data produced by the electronic avalanche effect with python, and made a presentation as my final assignment. In detail, I used the gaussian function to convolve the original data, in order to filter out the tremendous noise, and then use the typical fitting approach to locate the center/width/amplitude of each peak. The result turned out to be satisfying. I even found a “secondary” peak hidden beneath a larger one, such peak might not be easy to spot if not employing such method.
More detailed information can be found in the report (PDF, partially English).
Junior Year (2019.9 - 2020.9)
Computational Physics × MATLAB
This course offered me a great chance integrating computational skills with theoretical knowledge I collected from other physics courses. It also worth mentioning that, I performed some additional researches on the error handling algorithms when taking this course.
To be specific, I first realized that, by dividing the system into smaller elements, the precision can be almost always “improved”, and more identical to the real-life experiments, as was illustrated in the demo of an oscillating string below.
Simulation of an oscilliating string, with different element precision.
However, this kind of optimization have its own limits, since the storage and computing power of a modern computer is limited, and we cannot count on this technique when dealing with more complex systems. Therefore, I exploited the error cancallation methods based on the conservation laws of physics. When implemented correctly, the simulation works just fine with more percise results. The sample below shows a simulation on the rotating string with certain mass binded on both ends.
Simulation with no error cancellation methods introduced.
Simulation with Kinetic Conservation restraint only.
Simulation with both Kinetic Conservation and Angular Momentum Conservation restraint.
As a further step, I implemented the simulation of multiple charged particles running free in the magnetic confinement instrument, with all above metioned error cancellation methods embeded.
Simulation of magnetic confinement, with 1 pair of current rings.
Simulation of magnetic confinement, with 2 pairs of current rings.
Digital Circuit course works
I took the “Intro to Digital Circuit” course at fall 2019 semester. I decided to take this course for a better understanding of the fundamentals of modern digital instruments. This course interested me a lot, which is why I decided to take the optional task posted by the instructor, which is writing an application that simplifies any given logic expression. For better visualization and compatibility, I coded the program in JavaScript, utilizing the technique of pruning optimized breadth-first search. This application is capable of visualizing serval crucial steps of the algorithm, which is especially helpful for demonstrating and learning purposes.
This application is easy to integrate into any web page, as is shown below. It accepts input as either true-value list (m(1,3,...)) or classical logic expression (A + B * C + #D equals “A or (B and C) or (not D)”).
Event-live system
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds in the early 2020, courses of spring 2020 semester are brought online. However, the existing platforms for online course broadcasting have their own problems. One most critical problem is that teachers lack approaches to deliver interactive contents to their students. Upon detecting such problem when taking courses, I came up with an idea to utilize the html technology to build a system that would be capable of delivering interactive contents to the audience. The idea is, by creating applications demonstrating sophisticated concepts in a course and embed it into the course ware, it is possible to make the online course far more interactive.
After days of intensive coding, the first version of event-live system was completed. In order to experiment the interactive feature of the system, I gave a group presentation based on this system. The presentation contains multiple interactive applications, and the result turned out to be even better than I expected.
The system was also used for other two of my presentations, and I kept updating both the server side and user side code, it is now capable of coordinating multiple lecturers and provides a canvas that can be painted by multiple users simultaneously.
The system is deployed on events.yuxuanzhang.net.
Big data course works
The full name of the course could be better translated as “Big data technology and it’s application”, the course talks about the techniques commonly used in the big data analysis, including its properties and usage. The instructor of this course organized three presentations for us students to showcase our own researches and thoughts upon certain topics. One thing worth mentioning is that I used different methods each time I give a presentation.
The first time, I used a Keynote generated PDF, and broadcasted the content through a online meeting platform. I designed the slides to be a concise one, it was a successful innovation for my self because it combines a richness of information with the ease of concentration. Few text was included in the slides while the idea remained clear and persuasive.
[Image]
The second time of the presentation, I broadcasted the presentation as a video. Since I cooperate with two classmates to give the second presentation, I asked them to send their material to me so that I can include each of three team member’s keynote in a single video. I also made some nice little animation to demonstrate the process of a big-data algorithm. The recording of the presentation can be viewed below (In Chinese).
Before the third presentation, I completed the first version of my event-live system. I edited the presentation into the event-live system compatible version, and gave the presentation using this system. It was very successful since everyone had a chance to manipulate the interactive app embedded into the presentation. The event-live system has gone through serval major updates since then, but the original content of this presentation can still be accessed here.
Physics Q/A Service Volunteer
Due to the social quarantine during the epidemic of COVID-19, many high school students in China had difficulty getting access to lectures which are necessary for their preparation of the national college entrance examination (Chinese equivalence of SAT). In response, the admissions office of our university held a volunteering event in which university students, including both graduates and undergraduates, can help with the high school students with their problems encountered when preparing for the exam.
During the hours of my volunteering work, I not only responded to the students’ questions in person, but also made serval videos explaining the most frequently asked questions. Two of these videos are made publicly available in the link below (Notice that they are both in Chinese).
The volunteering work was evaluated in terms of “effective working hours”, which converts creative work (such as the video I made) into working hours. My total working hour reported in the official record is 135 hours. The photocopy of the official proof can be downloaded as official_proof.zip.
Senior Year (2020.9 - 2021.9)
Algorithm course presentation
I enrolled in the “Algorithm and Problem Solving” course in the fall 2020 semester. I find either the data structure and algorithm sections really interesting. The course have a sharing session for students to make presentations on given topics. I registered for the topic “Dijkstra Algorithm” and made a general purpose html application for visualization of graphs.
As is shown above, this application has an elaborately designed graphic user interface which enables users to have insight into the procedures of graph related algorithms. This experience is also crucial to me since I have successfully utilized computer technologies to help demonstrate my ideas.
Additionally, I again used the upgraded version of event-live system to host my demonstration, this time I made the slides even more friendly to both presenter and audience. The above shown app was designed to be fully compatible with the event-live system, and was integrated into the presentation hosted here.
Scientific Analyzer
The Scientific Analyzer is an ongoing project. This electron based application was designed to be capable of analyzing waves. The point is, by modulating every part of the process, customized transformations and measurements could be easily plugged in, providing infinite possibility while conserving ease of use.
Main Interface (Under development)
The current developing version can only read wave data from files. But it is planned to add oscilloscope compatibility to the I/O interface so that this application can directly capture data from live feeds.
Import Dialog (Under development)
VCA approximation using Quantum Espresso
This part of experience is still being edited. Please come back later if you are interested.
