From:
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 12:46 PM
To: Jeff Bigelow; Steve Maher; Jim Cutbirth; David Cassel; Jim Elkins; Byron Newberry; Wayne Whaley; Myra Nickerson; Mary Ann Brown; Joe Watson; Bill Ryan; David Waldo; Don Robinson
Cc: Ryan Harms; Luke Watson; Michael Collins; Natasha Hartsock; Alyson Mack; Charles Gregg; Charles Ray; Derek Nuckols; Heather Moore; Jackson Hejl; Jacob Ely; James Baird, Jr. -STUDENT ACCOUNT-; Jay Prock; Jonathan Langford; Joshua Gramling; Kevin Plumlee; Laura Kite; Meilani Rudamaga; Reuben Dodson; Stephen Maddux; Zachary Gladhill
Subject: PEC Solutions - School of Engineering
Importance: High
As many of you may or may not be aware, a certain problem has been identified in the PEC atrium. This problem has a radius of roughly 695,000 km and a surface temperature of approximately 11,000 oF. You are probably asking yourself, "How could I have missed such an atrocity?!? Why wasn’t I informed of this?" Well, luckily for us, this flaming ball of gas is located roughly 93 million miles away (as the crow flies) and the atmosphere of our Earth protects us from some of its most damaging effects. But even with a thick protective covering, we are still forced to scorch and squint when the sun comes shining in the large windows on the east side of the PEC atrium.
The problem is experienced primarily between the hours of 8:00am and 12:00pm. The bright light shining in makes it not only difficult to see in general, it also makes reading your laptop a bear (if you’ve ever tried to read a laptop in broad daylight you know what I’m talking about). In addition, the solar heat gain in the room makes sitting in the direct light uncomfortable as well as adding an unnecessary cooling load on the building’s HVAC system.
A solution was proposed by a small group of senior Mechanical Engineering students. The solution included using club banners from spring sing and suspending them from shower curtain rods in the east side windows. Unfortunately, after the first banner was put up, someone filed a complaint with Myra about the banner being up. It is our thought that the complaint was not due to the existence of some sort of functioning curtain, but due to the fact that it appeared like an advertisement for a single club.
We feel like curtains or some type of tinting on the windows is not too much to ask. Although some might not agree with the idea of having curtains up in the atrium, the majority of those who actually use the atrium feel it is a good idea. Of course funding could be provided by SGA and private donations. We would appreciate the Department Chairs response so that we can develop a solution to this problem.
Possible solutions include:
Blank Curtains
Window Tint
Retraceable Screen
Let’s be creative!
-The Engineering Students
