Samples of Needed Abilities

Author

DOFPro group

Introduction

Would you like to contribute to the Degrees of Freedom Project? We have need of people with skills in the areas listed below. Please choose two of the sample tasks, e.g., Number 2 under Scripts, and Number 1 under Software and CAD Conversion, and submit a sample of your work to us for each of your two chosen tasks.

Scripts

The prinicipal tasks in the area of scripts are rewriting existing scripts, writing new scripts, and editing existing scripts, and storyboarding. The available sample tasks are:

  1. Rewrite the linked portion of this script for an existing video to make it clearer and more accessible to students trying to learn chemical and thermal process principles. You may assume that the visuals can be changed.
  2. Write a short script for a video to explain either the differences among total internal energy \((U)\), specific internal energy \((\hat{U})\), and molar internal energy \((\hat{U})\) in Chemical Engineering, or the coefficient of drag, \(C_D\) for a rocket.
  3. Recommend some edits to the linked script to make it clearer and more accessible to students trying to learn chemical and thermal process principles.
  4. Storyboard the linked script.

Graphics Production

Graphics Production involves many aspect of the project. We need title screens for the videos, storyboards for the scripts, creation of the visuals, graphs, and figures for the videos and websites, and other elements of the graphic design for the websites and videos. The available sample tasks are:

  1. Create a title screen for the What Is a Mole? video.
  2. Create a reveal.js presentation for slides 3 and 4 (page 2) of the linked presentation.
  3. Recreate the process flow diagram (PFD) in the linked problem with your choice of open-source software.
  4. Create a 2D animation of the process flow diagram (PFD) in the linked problem. Have the reactor, heat exchanger, and distillation columns dissolve in one-by-one, and then the flow streams, and then trace the flow of propylene through the flow sterams and processing units.
  5. Create a 3D animation of a tank with a feed pipe filling with a liquid.

Recording and Editing

We have a large number of videos to record and all aspects of the recording and editing process will need to be done: lighting, staging, setting up sound equipment, operating the cameras, acting, editing the videos, editing the audio, mastering and final production, and posting. Our current cameras are a GoPro Hero 10 and a Canon VIXIA HF G70. We have several microphones including a RØDE Wireless PRO set. Our editing is done with Final Cut Pro X on a Mac. The available sample projects are:

  1. Light and photograph an interesting object.
  2. Create a prop for use in a chemical and thermal processes or rocketry video.
  3. Record a short video of someone explaining what internal energy is and include at least one transition.
  4. Record a short video of someone singing, then optimize the sound quality, e.g, use an expander to drop the noise floor, a compressor to narrow the dynamic range, an equalizer to balance the frequency response, and some reverb to enhance the sound (just to clarify, e.g. means for example, it does not mean in other words).
  5. Make a short video that shows proper use of at least three of the following:
    1. Standard cut
    2. Jump cut
    3. Crossfade
    4. Wipe
    5. J- or L-cut
    6. Fade-in or fade-out
  6. Make short audio recording of someone speaking in a noisy environment and provide before-and-after samples of applying compression and expansion and/or other effects to optimize the noise reduction and audio quality. Explain how you did it.

Website Production

We are creating and editing the websites in Quarto and posting on github. VS Code is the recommended development environment. Quarto uses Markdown for most of the text editing and Mathjax (LaTeX) for equation editing. We are creating our presentations in Quarto using the revealjs format. The sample tasks in website production are:

  1. Convert the linked webpage into a Quarto “.qmd” document that will render correctly (but not necessarily identically). Adding “?noformat” to the end of the URL may make your task much easier.
  2. Convert the linked presentation (PDF version) (Keynote version) (Powerpoint version) to a Quarto presentation using the revealjs format and render it in PDF.
  3. Using css, change the linked webpage (link) (source) so that the table values are in a red serif font and the links are in a green italics serif font.
  4. Provide a step-by-step expalation of how you would set up and organize a team to use Quarto and Github with VS Code collaboratively edit a website and track all changes to the code base.

Problem Set and Example Conversion

Many of the example problems, homework problems, and projects are currently tied to copyrighted textbooks and commercial software. All of them need to be converted to problems releasable under creative commons and reference open-source software. The sample tasks in this section are:

  1. Either convert or describe the process for converting the linked assignment (.docx) (.pdf) to be releasable under creative commons.
  2. Either convert or describe the process for converting the example in Slides 14 through 18 (slides) (video starting at 10:08) to be releasable under creative commons.
  3. Either convert or describe the process for converting the linked project to be releasable under creative commons.

Software and CAD Conversion

We have lots of example solutions, assignment solutions, projects, and CAD files that need to be converted from commercial software to open source. We have decided that we are going to make the following conversions:

  1. Microsoft Excel files to LibreOffice files
  2. MATLAB code to Python with NumPy and SciPy code
  3. Mathematica code to SageMath code
  4. Solidworks files to FreeCAD files
  5. PRO/II files to DWSIM files.

The sample projects available in software and CAD conversion are:

  1. Convert the linked spreadsheet from a “.xlsx” file to a “.ods” file and preserve as much of the formatting as possible.
  2. Convert the linked “.m” file into a “.py” file. The data file it processes is linked here.
  3. Convert the linked “.m” file into a “.R” file. The data file it processes is linked here.
  4. Convert the linked “.nb” file into SageMath code.
  5. Convert the linked “.SLDPRT” file into an “FCStd” file.
  6. Convert the linked “.prz” to a “.dwxmz” file.