The Plastic Block That Constructed My Future

Date: November 14, 2012

Early Trips to ToysR’Us

“Mommy, let’s go to ToysR’Us today!” I would say enthusiastically from the living room. “Okay, but be quick,” she would yell down the hallway between the living room and her room upstairs. I jumped into the Jeep and clicked my seat belt tight. During that ride I couldn’t stop squirming around. ToysR’Us was my go-to place for Legos when I was younger. I would weave up and down the aisles looking for a kit I did not yet own. As I wove through the halls, I looked all around me, there were twenty-foot tall walls in every direction, looking as if they were about to fall on me, and I was surrounded by these building blocks. I looked up into the walls, all I saw was the colors, the various shapes of the Legos. Imagining what I could do with the Legos, my eyes twinkled like a star.

Learning to Build

Petite, colorful, multi-sized blocks of plastic kept me fascinated for hours beginning at the age of three. My imagination ignited and I was incredibly curious to see what I could create with the small bricks. I built airplanes, rockets, spaceships, robots and so much more. My curiosity for creating and challenging myself began early. As soon as I got my new set of Legos, I would immediately tear off the box, and strip the pieces from their plastic coating within. In this box, there was something else, a piece of paper, which happened to be the instructions to build it. As a little boy, I always thought to myself, “It’s too much effort to read them step-by-step and create it.” Instead, I looked at the picture and built it myself without instructions. My imagination took off with these tiny building blocks; the possibilities of creations were endless. I didn’t know it then, but my destiny was already determined, fate brought me to Legos. They were now part of my life and there was no turning back. As soon as I completed my creation of the day, I would show my dad for his sign of approval.

Curiosity and Tinkering

I trotted down from my room, leaving it covered with Legos, into the basement where my dad’s shop is located. I ran down to the shop, full of particle dust, and showed him my creation, a helicopter. He immediately criticized the design flaw of not being proportional, in turn, this made me seek his approval, and try harder. He said, “The only way you will improve is if you try and try again.” His words of wisdom have stuck with me ever since. As a building contractor, he recognized my love for Legos. He saw that I had an aptitude for building things, so when I was in elementary school he took the opportunity to teach me the essentials of construction. He taught me everything I needed to know for example, how to drill, how to hammer, just the simple stuff. When I had finally completed the fundamentals in seventh grade, my dad gave me a gift stowed in a Mahogany wooden chest. The smell of the fresh wood was delicious! I opened up the reddish-brown box to find my own leather tool belt. Overjoyed, I grabbed it and slung it over my body as it sat higher on my left hip than it did my right. I could see my image within my father’s and he came back with a smile on his face and his hands behind his back. “Which hand?” he asked. I immediately pointed to the left, because I write with my left hand. He began to pull out a shiny new hammer with a yellow shaft, and ready to use. Behind his other, twenty-five, three-inch nails to start out with. He told me each day that I improved my construction, he would teach me how to use a new tool. My favorite tool was the jigsaw, because I could make any kind of shape and it tool worked flawlessly. Step by step, he taught me countless skills and techniques. I would use this knowledge to make useful items, such as boxes and birdhouses. My dad always taught me to think outside the box with my head. How is this creation different than others? Is there anything I can do to make it better? These questions kept me thinking.

“How does this thing work?” I investigated this query when playing with my toys. I held a fluorescent blue remote control, equipped with one nine-volt battery and an antenna. I pressed the left stick up, the car, which was thirty feet away, turned left forward. And as I pressed the right stick up, it turned right. Was it magic? No, but how did it work? Since my dad had just taught me all the principles, I now had a plethora of tools at my disposal; I grabbed my handy screwdriver and immediately popped the car and remote open. I opened it up, what looked like a large piece of green cardboard, a lot of wires, and four motors. I was curious, so I proceeded by taking a battery and connecting it to the motors with wires. Bam! The car smashed straight into the wall. Discouraged, I set this project aside and began to piece the car back to its original form. I put the car aside in my cabinet, and decided when the time presents itself, I will return back to this project.

Mathematics is a child’s worst nightmare, well for anyone beside myself. Ever since I started math, I loved it. It was so straightforward for me. One answer, right or wrong, that’s how math is judged. Back, when I was a fifth grader, we learned the foundation of our math skills; our teacher had given us a worksheet with long math problems. The first one was an example, and she went through every single step with us. I was shocked; I didn’t want to show that much work for a simple math problem. I quickly examined the sheet and between the little lines of multiplication and division I found a shortcut to do math quicker. I didn’t need to show every step, because I stored the numbers in my head like a calculator. Before my teacher had finished explaining the lesson, I had already computed all the answers to the homework. When she had finished explaining the lesson, I proudly walked up to her while my other classmates began their’s. Her face turned blue, speechless, she was in awe that I completed all of the answers so quickly with little to no work shown. She began to explain how I would learn even better skills by helping other students. I helped every student in my class. The time had flown by so quickly. At the time, math was just fun, but what could math actually be applied to? Looking at it now, after upper division math and science classes, math is about numbers, and these simple numbers can explain how the world works.

In eighth grade we had monthly show and tell day for my science class and in November I brought my half geode I had found in Hawaii. Mrs. Perrera, the science teacher, had brought this green thing to class. I felt nostalgic, she had broad in the same “green cardboard” that I had found in my car. I was carefully listening to every word she said. She said it was called a microchip. Continuing her lecture, she told us that a “microchip is a tiny wafer of semiconducting material, which was usually silicone due to the exception properties of the element, used to make an integrated circuit.” After listening to her about this, I immediately wanted change the microchip to modify the car. Little did I know, I could not actually change the microchip, because it is a permanent circuit that could not be altered. I ended up frying the microchip and destroying my car, but it was worth it because it sparked my curiosity.

A week after frying my microchip, I began to research more and more and I made my own simple circuits using light emitting diodes (LEDs), sensors, and various other objects. Building these little circuits made me remember my Legos, I was becoming more advanced with my creations, but it was no different than the building blocks. It was still about creating and putting my mind to the limit. Circuits and Legos are no different; each one is precisely sized and engineered for the purpose to create.

School Projects

“Research papers, how boring!” I thought to myself, as I spaced out into the white board. It was second week of my freshmen year of high school and already, our teacher was about to assign us a research topic. The topic was extremely random because it could vary from the invention of fire to first landing on the moon. I began to anticipate a horrible topic, because I always get the worst of luck. My teacher began to yell our names,

“Erik.” I was all the way in the back, half asleep as I heard my name.

“Yes?” I responded while yawning.

“You will have, Renewable energy: Hydrogen.”

At the time, I barely knew what hydrogen was, let alone it could be used as reusable energy. It sounded boring at first, but then I began to research about it, little by little I began to build up information on hydrogen. My eyes were glued to the monitor and my mind craved that knowledge. Wikipedia was my friend for this project, I couldn’t cite it as a source because our teacher said they were not credible, but I read the entire page on hydrogen just to learn. I learned of hydrolysis, which is converting water to hydrogen ions. After building on the basis of hydrogen, I learned about hydrogen cars, which would be an alternate to using fossil fuels to power cars. I turned in the six-page essay to my teacher Monday morning with a huge smile on my face. More often after this paper, I found myself reading more about technology and sciences. They were the only topics that interested me. Hydrolysis helped inspire me in knowing that I wanted to pursue a career that involved chemistry. Chemistry creates a formula to solve a problem and Legos are combined in a certain way to create a structure. Legos and chemistry go hand in hand.

Going from my sophomore to junior year would be huge leap, especially because at my high school juniors are able to enroll in different academies. Academies focus on several choices such as film, science, and engineering. This was one of the easiest decisions I ever had to make, since engineering is a grown-up form of playing with Legos it was naturally my choice. The last week of sophomore year is when we began to sign up; I immediately grabbed a form from the counselor’s office and filled in the engineering box. My heart pounded as I ran to turn it in, engineering only had a limited amount of spots, and I needed to get into that academy. I wove through the hallway at our school, bumping into a couple of people, as I yelled “Sorry,” still running. I eventually reached the office, and I turned in my form, and felt a weight lifted off my shoulders; I would be guaranteed a spot in the engineering academy.

After excelling throughout the simple projects in the engineering program, our final project was approaching, a Human Powered Vehicle (or HPV for short). A HPV is an experimental, fantasy bike that teams design, build and sell to imaginary entrepreneurs. I was chosen to be the team leader, and together we developed a futuristic, three-wheeled, metal vehicle. The process of fusing together metal is called welding; taking the cut pieces of steel and welding them together is how I spent most of my time. I put on my leather apron, my gloves, and my mask, and then set up all of the welding material. I had to ground the machine, turn on the gas, and adjust its settings. Now all I had to do was carefully weld together these pieces. People make a living by welding, and I understood how, welding was difficult, yet entertaining.  My group had many hardships, like most of the other teams. “One step forward, two steps back,” my engineering teacher constantly reminded us. Planning, building, re-planning, problems, this is what engineering is, it is problem solving.

In the end, the HPV turned out different than we envisioned, in the beginning we conceptualized a bike you would lay on, two wheels, and sort of like the motorcycle from the movie, “The Dark Knight.” We dubbed it as the “Batman Bike.” The bike could be ridden, and we were among the first in the entire academy to finish our vehicle. We continued to ride our bike around, until at one point someone tried to ride it and it completely snapped. My group and I decided we would completely change our design instead of trying to repair our salvaged bike. This design would be instead three wheels, two in the front, one in the back, and you would sit down instead of lying down. First, it would be started with two rectangular frames that would create a rectangular prism. Between the frame and the front would be the two front wheels, and we created a rack and pinion steering wheel system. In the back, we attached a single back wheel. This would be the power wheel propelled like a bicycle. The crankshaft, which is the part to propel a bike, would be in front of you. You would be sitting down and your legs would be elevated above your hips. We based this design around a few key concepts: lightness, agility, and the option for a steering wheel.

Motorcycles, Robotics, and Fire

This whole drafting process of the HPV took time to lay out, but instead of winging it and just building, my group learned make an outline instead of going straight to the final draft. This project caused me to pull all of my previous knowledge from my other projects and my beloved Legos. Everything pieced together perfectly, just like Legos. The HPV turned out operational and amazing. As we finished, my group and I immediately took it down the hallways to show it off. This would be our testing phase, so I cruised down the hallway at high speed as my sweaty palms proceeded to get ready to grab the handbrake. Immediately at the corridor, Simultaneously I quickly swiveled the steering wheel left and clutched the handbrake. I had just drifted down the hallway in this HPV without any damage. It’s just that feeling of ecstasy when you spend countless hours and you create something from scratch, and then it just works as your planned. I, alone spent four hours each week for thirty weeks on this project, and spent even more outside of class. Its like writing a book, it may take years to complete, but once you’re done, you are overjoyed with the end result. This was my first real introduction to true engineering and I loved it. After completing this mechanical project, my mind was wrapped around metal, gears, and transportation. This project pushed me into a new direction of mechanics.

I don’t know why, but men seem to be fascinated by cars, but there’s something even better than cars: motorcycles. Motorcycles are faster and more efficient than cars. When I was twelve years old, I had always seen this black cover next to the car toward the left corner in the garage. I was so curious what it could be, so I decided to ask my dad to pull it off and show me. He grabbed the bottom left corner of the cover and ripped it off. Under it was a red, white, and blue motorcycle. He explained to me that it is a 1984 V4 Honda Interceptor, but it’s been a dust-collector for twenty years. I asked him, “Dad, can we fix it up?”

“Yes we can, how about this summer?” he responded.

“Okay, just let me know when you have time.” I said, while I casually walked back up to my room. Well, from that point on, he was always busy until the summer of my junior year because he was always working. The summer of my junior year, my dad, brother, and I completely fixed the motorcycle to make it look brand new. It began by stripping the dust-ridden motorcycle to its bare bones. This involved taking the plastic body off, the wheels, the engine, and the gas tank, everything except for its aluminum body. After taking off all of the parts, we had to drain it of all its liquids. The motor oil was gross, I popped off the cap and the oil slowly dripped into the cup, it was so thick, so viscous, just like maple syrup.

In the beginning, all three of us began by ripping everything apart and organizing the parts. As we progressed, I found myself working on it alone. I was determined to finish this project; there was no way I would let this sit collecting dust for another twenty years. I loved being alone at times; it was just the motorcycle and I. I could concentrate so well in the silence. I loved fixing the carburetor, it was a small unit of the motorcycle, but is responsible for the blending of the air and fuel for an internal combustion engine. The most tedious part of the motorcycle was when we cleaned the fuel tank. My dad forgot to drain out the gas before he let it sit for twenty years, and the gas underwent a chemical reaction with the tank and created precipitates within the tank. Together, my dad and I washed the tank thoroughly fifteen times with various solutions to clean the tank.

After four weeks, and many hours, we finally restored this old bike to new condition. The final test was to see if it worked. My dad said, “Give it a go, Erik.”

“Really?” He shook his head, and I slowly inserted the key into the ignition, I turned the key, immediately I heard a whining sound. Each time we turned it, it made the same sound. It was a high pitch squeal as if it came from a three-year-old girl.

“Oh, shit, we forgot the gas,” my dad said as he laughed. After filling the gas tank, I reached for the ignition key for a second go, and VROOM. It had started once again. I advance further and further from my Legos, but in actuality I am closer than ever. Just like my Legos, I took apart the entire motorcycle, refined it, and put it back into a more efficient device. My Legos continue to play a key role even now when they are tucked away under my bed. Before I knew it, time had flown by and senior year was approaching.

My senior year of high school is where my senioritis really kicked in, every subject except for engineering class. This year in the engineering academy, we were assigned the project of the year. I was getting nervous, what could it be? Would I like the project? Our engineering teacher began to announce the project and the bell rang. I had to wait one more class to find out the project. I came to class the next day all jittery, until he finally announced it. The project this year would be a robot. It wasn’t any old robot kit you put together, but its one we actually programmed using code. We began with the simple programs, so everyone would be able to learn. They were simple and I excelled at compiling them, until it was finally time to create our robot. I started by taking metal pieces to form a body, which would contain two stepper motors, ten AA batteries, line tracking sensors, a ping sensor, and the microprocessor. These main parts combined would create a robot that would be able to follow a line, and eventually navigate through a maze.

I was perplexed at first, but I learned that as you began to understand the code, it was like learning a new language. The process was tedious, constant tweaking of the code would either make it work perfectly, but with one single error, the code would result in an error. When my robot first started working, I ran around the class high-fiving everyone I saw. Finally, something worked on this robot. The robot had two wheels with stepper motors attached, and one swivel wheel in the front. It was made of thin sheet metal, and you would see the microprocessor on top. The ping sensor would look as if the robot was staring right at you; it was freaky, because I could make it turn either way by tweaking the code. The whole robot was six inches long and three inches in width, though it was very heavy. In our class, my robot was the first to complete the maze in our academy, after that point every single person wanted my help to get theirs working. At this point, I felt like a hotshot, it really made me feel like a true engineer. The project really improved my ability to learn, coding has now become a hobby for me PBasic coding was just the beginning, and now I continue to learn other types like C++. Writing code is just like putting blocks of Legos together. You add some, take some out, consolidate, and improve. The structure could always be improved. After each project I completed, I showed my parents for their sign of approval. They were so intrigued by some, while agitated at me with others.

“You’re such a pyro!” my parents would always exclaim. They first told me this when I lit a leaf on fire with a lighter in third grade. And though I didn’t want to admit it, I was a pyro. Fire stuck to my eyes like glue, as hard as I tried, I could not take my eyes off of it. It was just so beautiful. All my life I had played with fire, and my parents would always yell at me when I used to take a lighter and light anything non-hazardous on fire, but my eyes were glued to the flame. My love for fire started with fireworks. When I went to San Francisco on the Fourth of July, I loved the fiery aspect of the fireworks. Pyrotechnic engineers use fire to make beauty it is simply amazing.

One day in the summer of my senior year I decided to make a flamethrower; not the smartest idea, but let me tell you, it was fun. I was inspired when I studied about World War I, and saw the huge backpacks on the soldiers. They perplexed me, and I wanted to experience it firsthand. To start I took a squirt gun, and made sure it had a two-gauge tank so the fire could not flow back in. For the flammable liquid I needed some gasoline and filled the squirt gun up. As I walked closer to the gasoline could smell the volatile liquid run up my nostrils, it felt good, dangerous, and I felt the rush of my capillaries as they ran blood throughout my body. After I acquired my gasoline, I began to secure a lighter to the tip of my squirt gun. I quickly pumped the gun rapidly to the fullest extent, and flicked at the lighter to ignite it. As I was about to press the trigger, my heart began to beat, I felt nervous. My body had overridden my mind, and I held the trigger down. A trail of fire begins to form from the tip of the squirt gun over twenty-five feet in length. As the flame fell to the ground it still lay lit. It was exhilarating; my heart was beating in excitement. Combustion reactions were always my favorite. The fact that the flammable gas needs oxygen and yield carbon and water is an amazing concept. In chemistry class this past year we had made bubbles full of methane and lit them on fire, every time I see the flame, it gives me joy. Luckily, my parents had no idea what I had been doing during this time. This project was the sciences at work.

Looking Ahead

I have lived in the same place all my life for eighteen years. There, I learned everything I know to go into the real world. It was now my time to travel from Northern California down to Southern California into my new home for the next four years at Loyola Marymount University. As I was packing up all of my clothes for college, I came across an enormous box in the attic full of cobwebs. I proceeded to blow away the cobwebs and pulled off the tight lid on the box. It was full of my old memories, my Legos. Looking back into my past in the box has made me see my future clearly. Incredibly my building skills have gone from interlocking plastic blocks together to welding hot metal. I looked deeply into my box full of Legos, and I was so sad that I ignored them for years. I missed my Legos, but I knew I had to move on, as I could not bring them to college. I needed to move on to bigger things, and continue to improve my critical skills. As I headed out on my seven-hour drive to my school, I began to reminisce about my projects and my Legos. My Legos are now gone, but my curiosity and creativity are not. I want to study and succeed in a field that I know will inspire me and one that has always been within me. Engineering will balance my interests and skills perfectly. If small, multi-shaped bricks can alter my life, then I cannot wait to see what the future at Loyola Marymount will bring.