THE UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY JOURNAL OF UNDERGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP
The Agriculture Education Society, along with the UK FFA Alumni Association, was looking for a way to fur-ther develop both clubs' potential through professional development. Recognizing the lack of agriculture pro-grams in the Fayette County School system, the clubs knew they wanted to educate students on the importance of agriculture. Feeling the need to better educate students, the clubs developed Farm-in-the City Day. The first Farm-in-the City Day was a great success with stations educating elementary through middle school students on goats, beef, dairy, soil, chickens, rabbits, and horticulture. Amazed by the number of students who had never been in contact with these live animals, the clubs planned another Farm-in-the City Day. Even if they can only educate a small portion of the Fayette County students, they hope that the students leave with a little more knowledge of basic agriculture. It appalled the club members that a county with so many agriculture aspects and industries as Fayette County has only one agriculture program in place to educate the youth of tomorrow.
B.I.G. B.L.U.E. III
Balloon-Launched Experiment
www.engr.uky.edu/bigblue
B.I.G. B.L.U.E. (Baseline inflatable Glider Balloon-Launched Unmanned Experiment) is a flight experiment developed, designed, built and flown primarily by students in the College of Engineering at the University of Kentucky. BIG BLUE was conceived as a demonstration of unique technologies with potential for application for Mars exploration. A team of over 40 undergraduate students from mechanical and electrical and computer engineering designed, fabricated, tested, and flew a balloon-launched, high altitude, inflatable-wing glider. The first flight of the BIG BLUE occurred May 3, 2003 in Ft. Collins, CO, supported by Edge of Space Sciences (EOSS), an amateur group of ham radio and high altitude ballooning enthusiasts. The Sponsors of BIG BLUE II were the NASA Workforce
The UK Wildcat Pull-ing Team placed 3rd overall in this year's International Quarter-Scale Tractor Design Competition sponsored by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE), continuing UK's string of top-three finishes. UK won the Maneuverability Award for the 2nd
Wildcat Pulling Team
www.bae.uky.edu/qscale/tractor.htm
Development Program via the KY Space Grant Con-sortium, in partnership with engineers at ILC Dover, Inc, designers of NASA's spacesuits and other engineered soft goods products, and members of EOSS.
There was another successful launch for BIG BLUE, this time version III, April 30,2005 in Windsor, Colorado. Big Blue weighed 23.7 pounds and reached 97,873 feet in altitude before bursting. The inflated wings continued ascent with the balloon to the maximum altitude and then descended under a parachute for recovery. The wing pressurization maintained a wing shape suitable for flight throughout, demonstrating the feasibility of inflatable wing technology for Mars exploration. The onboard camera captured the wing deployment. Other images from the edge of space include the moon and stars, while images from closer to ground level show the snowy countryside and the recovery team moving into position for the touchdown! Big Blue II was part of the "Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance," an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum in New York City from April 8 through October 30, 2005. The exhibition explored recent advances in technical textiles from a wide range of areas, including architecture, apparel, medicine, trans-portation, aerospace, and environment.
