glamourpusstakesoff-blog-blog

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long night of studying

busy studying for my AE1201 aerospace design & systems eng 1 exam on orbital mechanics but thought i would take a break to post a cute picture of moi!

please take note of my new Rescue Beauty Lounge polish seen here in "A Nude Creme." let me know if you like!

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graphs i made

so, recently i have been writing a program and it produced these graphs! (please disregard the fact it says "Lauren McManus" above the image. i don't know how that got there, but these are def my graphs.)

i also captured this image of a deployed airfoil flap!

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naca airfoil data, etc.

so as i was working with some naca airfoil data (see below), i started thinking about aerodynamic clothing and what's been done in this field of design.

so anyway, then i saw this editorial from the WSJ and didn't really know how i felt. the caption accompanying the spread reads, "Fall's new silhouettes are streamlined for speed."  it seems to me like the it's just a bunch of people wearing skirtsuits and heels in a real hurry to get somewhere. (LOL at the girl in red. she really needs to spend some time with miss j. also LOL at the guy behind her who's presumably transporting art or something? the intern?)

i really loved this one, but i'm not sure what's so aerodynamic about it. (maybe the heels?)

i also like these shots craig dean took for w magazine. "So what does the future of fashion of look like? “It just may be some aerodynamic looks with Space-Age or Eighties flavor that capture movement in their shapes and details.”

  The ethereal photoshoot features model Ymre Stiekema styled by Alex White in creations from Maison Martin Margiela, Comme des Garcons, Malo, MaxMara, Fendi, Chanel, Calvin Klein, St. John and others."

i really like the purple shoulderpads on the bottom left. very aerodynamic.

i also like the fact that they have clearly considered practicality and safety with this long skirted/helmeted look. a girl's gotta look good, even during a lunar apocalypse! (note: i just looked up 'lunar apocalypse,' and apparently it doesn't mean what i thought it did. it has something to do with a video game? anyway, you get my point):

let me know what you guys think!

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schlieren photography

i've recently been looking at schlieren photography, which is a process used to photograph the flow of fluids of varying density. basically, it shows the flow of air around objects. 

i really like the aesthetic of this image:

Knife-edge method of viewing schlieren, employing the “z” configuration:

other cool pics:

i really like this one, but can't help but think that it would be so much cooler if the girl didn't look so tragic/ the whole thing had a more fashiony feel/ she was looking pouty and/or smizing:

i think my faves are actually the black and white ones--super artsy.

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plane imagery is so cute.

i just want to put it on a totebag.

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women in aerospace engineering are seriously not cute (myself excluded).

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getting down to business

okay, so classes are in full swing, so i thought i'd take the opportunity to blog a little bit about what i'm doing in school. in engineering 101 we are learning about the basics behind streamlines and streamtubes. here is an article i found helpful in understanding streamlines:

"A streamline is a line that is tangential to the instantaneous velocity direction (velocity is a vector, and it has a magnitude and a direction). To visualize this in a flow, we could imagine the motion of a small marked element of fluid. For example, we could mark a drop of water with fluorescent dye and illuminate it using a laser so that it fluoresces. If we took a short exposure photograph as the drop moves according to the local velocity field (where the exposure needs to be short compared to the time it takes for the velocity to change appreciably), we would see a short streak, with a length V \Delta t, and with a direction tangential to the instantaneous velocity direction. If we mark many drops of water in this way, the streamlines in the flow will become visible. Since the velocity at any point in the flow has a single value (the flow cannot go in more than one direction at the same time), streamlines cannot cross. except at points where the velocity magnitude is zero, such as at a stagnation point.

There are other ways to make the flow visible. For example, we can trace out the path followed by our fluorescent drop using a long-exposure photograph. This line is called a pathline, and it is similar to what you see when you take a long-exposure photograph of car lights on a freeway at night. It is possible for pathlines to cross, as you can imagine from the freeway analogy: as a car changes lanes, the pathline traced out by its lights might cross another pathline traced out by an adjoining vehicle at a different time.

Another way to visualize flow patterns is by streaklines. A streakline is the line traced out by all the particles that passed through a particular point at some earlier time. For instance, if we issued fluorescent dye continuously from a fixed point, the dye makes up a streakline as it passes downstream. To continue the freeway analogy, it is the line made up of the lights on all the vehicles that passed through the same toll booth. If they all follow the same path (a steady flow), a single line results, but if they follow different paths (unsteady flow), it is possible for the line to cross over itself.

In unsteady flow, streamlines, pathlines and streaklines are all different, but in steady flow, streamlines, pathlines and streaklines are identical."

while i will pretend i know what that means, i really don't because i always spend the whole class drawing faces on the diagrams in my book.

before:

after:

what i learned: everything is better with fangs.

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FOLLOW-UP TO SECOND POST!

okay, so as i said in my last post, my sparkle plane ended up looking pretty decent, but it just wasn't the thing i wanted to be holding in the picture of me in my banner. i still thought i needed to be holding SOMETHING though (to really convey my relaxed, carefree personality, and also to give me something to do with my hands), so i decided to be holding a cigarette, because it was the second-coolest option (the first being the sparkle plane.)

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SECOND POST!

okay, so i am in the process of designing some kind of banner to go at the top of my blog, and i thought it would be super cute if i were to let out my crafty side and take a picture of myself holding a model airplane that i assembled and decorated with sparkly stuff. (you know, because i am blogging about aerospace engineering.) i kind of envisioned it looking like these miu miu platforms i have been salivating over:

i assembled the plane, and that went fine, and then i spraypainted it black (chic, non?) and i THOUGHT that part went fine too, until it was time to put the sparkles on.  it was then that i realized spray paint must not be intended for use on styrofoam (is this common knowledge???) because huge chunks of the styrofoam were MISSING! as if they had just dissolved up! so anyway, the resulting plane is looking kind of wonky, but i am fairly pleased with the way the multicolored sequins/gemstones turned out.  see below for image:

here is a close-up to demonstrate the huge cavities in the styrofoam that weren't there when i started (seen primarily in nose of plane):

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FIRST POST!

hello everyone! welcome to my corner of the blogosphere! i'm starting this blog as i embark on my journey as an aerospace engineering student at CalTech. EEEEEEEEEEE! i am really excited to be taking this step closer to my dream career (as an aerospace engineer), but i thought this blog could serve as a creative outlet where i post fun things i'm learning in addition to other, fashiony things that i like.