User:Teddy Ruby

General

My name is Edward John Ruby, but I go by Teddy. I was born and raised in San Jose, CA about an hour south of San Francisco. I have an older brother that graduated from Duke in 2015, and a sister who will be graduating from UNC Chapel Hill this spring.

Name Pronunciation

My name is pronounced exactly how it sounds. Teddy is pronounced like you would say Teddy Bear, but without the bear. Ruby sounds just like the gem. Overall, I feel like its a pretty solid name.

Interests

My interests vary from sports and politics to justice issues and microfinance, and encompass many things in between.

Sports

Much of my life revolves around sports. I played primarily lacrosse in High School, but have moved on from there since coming to Duke. I'm part of the club cricket and club sailing teams here at Duke. I'm a huge bay area sports fans, s I try to watch every 49ers, Giants, Warriors, Sharks, and Earthquakes game I can. I'm also a huge fan of the ocean and surfing, and get out in the water as much as possible.

Academics

As far as academics go, I'm a history guy. It doesn't seem to match perfectly with Pratt, but nonetheless I'm hoping I can find a way to blend the two. I do also did really enjoy physics in High School and am hoping that will transfer to Duke as well. In terms of engineering, I am very undecided on what type I want to pursue.

Grand Challenges for Engineering

From reading though the 14 points, I do feel like some are much more important than others. That being said, I believe access to clean water is one of the most pressing issues of the modern day. A group of students at the University of Rhode Island who partnered with colleges from UVA and Potters for Peace created a cheap ceramic filtration system that is accessible and use friendly in rural parts third world countries. Their efforts hope to decrease the amount of sickness that occurs due to unsafe water that takes children away from school and inhibits families abilities to better their life.

Engineer helps poor in developing nations purify drinking water, The University of Rhode Island, PHYS, updated 16 Match 2009, accessed 13 September 2015 (Provide Access to Clean Water)

Matlab Demonstrations

In my opinion the most helpful and entertaining demonstration was the 3-D plots app. Being able to manipulate variable and see the change in code and the resulting curve gave me a much better understanding of how they affected each other. It can be difficult to follow code when reading it on a script, but seeing the visual representation of the graph helped explain what each command did. I also enjoyed it because the graphs look interesting. 3-D graphs with shading are much more visually appealing than 2-D line graphs. The cool color map is definitely my favorite of the bunch.