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November 2004, Issue #34
JETS News
Take the JETS Challenge
The JETS challenge is a new feature of the JETS website. Each week JETS will post a new challenge question provided by Dave Meredith, Associate Professor at the Penn State University-Fayette, and the following week the solution along with a new challenge will be posted. See below for the first JETS Challenge — or click here for a printable pdf version. E-mail your answer to JETS at challenge@jets.org to enter the weekly drawing for a copy of the book "Is There an Engineer Inside You?" Good luck and have fun!
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The Challenge of the Sound Bit
Your television screen has 512 lines of 640 pixels each. Each pixel on the screen is refreshed 24 times per second. The digital signal for each pixel is stored as a set of three 8-bit bytes — one for each color, red, green, and blue. (Bytes are like words and bits are like letters. So "Penn State" would be a 9-bit byte). The sound quality is an additional 100 kilo-bit per second signal rate. Through an electronic process, the signal is compressed 10:1, so the actual stored signal is only a tenth of required size. A typical DVD stores 3 hours of sound and video (including the outtakes and commentary) in an annular area of 12.5 cm outside diameter by 4 cm inside diameter. Each bit is stored as a series of spaced dashes separated by similar-sized spaces that are "read" by a laser scanner.
If each bit or spacer is square in shape, what is the length (meters) of a single bit?
Click here to print a pdf of this week's challenge. |
TEAMS — Open the World of Engineering to Your Students
TEAMS is an annual one-day competition held on college and university campuses across the country from February through March. Provide your students with the opportunity to win prizes and apply what you have been teaching them in a team-based academic competition that will open the world of engineering and illustrate how math and science come to life while solving real-world engineering problems. To learn more and to register, visit http://www.jets.org/programs/teams.cfm.
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