Last night we watched Spirited Away in the big auditorium here in Howe Hall. I already knew I liked the movie, and it was fun to see the others’ reactions. I think most of us really enjoyed it and we are talking about also watching Howl’s Moving Castle sometime soon.

Today, we had our first Deeper Dive session. I really enjoyed getting to learn more about 3D printing and additive manufacturing as a whole. We talked about why 3D printing is sometimes called “rapid prototyping”- which is because you can create models faster than with traditional methods (rapid) and those functional models can be used as a prototype (prototyping). We also got a cool demonstration and explanation of the different parts of the 3D printers as well as an explanation of the hardware that controls the machines. We also started talking about file types and what you can do with different files. We learned that while you can convert a CAD file to a STL file, you can’t covert a STL file back to CAD because the STL file does a process called tessellation. This converts the CAD geometry into a mesh of triangles, so you would not have the same exact shape if you put it back from STL to CAD.

We will have another Deeper Dive session this afternoon and we are probably going to have a girls night tonight. We are going to watch a movie, do some crafts, and have some good snacks.

Here is a picture of us (ft. Anjali’s dog) at the movie last night: