Some Thoughts - New Thesis Ideas

So after the last class, I've been thinking a lot about my current thesis proposal. For the longest time, all I've really wanted to do was come up with a comprehensive plan for my parent's home in New Jersey. Don't give me crap for it, it's a great place. In the woods, 5 acres of property, South Branch of the Raritan River in front of the house, 100 feet of elevation, and surrounded by a Wildlife Preserve. It is serene, quiet, and is pretty much a vacation whenever I go home. The house was built in 1830, is solid stone (2 feet thick, might I add), and has the thermal value of a single pane of glass. I mean, the R4 windows are more insulative than the walls. I thought it would be awesome to go off grid with the house, and have a modernized zero energy home, that was at one point a fishing lodge before the Civil War. The whole thing could have been expanded upon and been a great project (I still really want to do this post-graduation), but for a thesis, I have a much better idea, or so I currently think.

The professors were saying that it would be helpful and/or interesting to relate thesis to something that I have been interested in before my relatively brief architectural stint. To all of my friends, that "interest" is almost as obvious as asking if Carnegie Mellon has a large Asian student population; I'm talking about cars. I'm really into cars. Sport compacts, muscle cars, supercars, and so on and so forth. I had an '03 civic Si that was pretty extensively modified, and now I have a '95 E36 BMW M3 that is equally as modified. I was trying to relate cars (and modifying them) to architecture, when somehow gas mileage popped into my head. The Si was supposed to get 28 miles per gallon on the highway as it was stock from the factory. The M3, 25 mpg. The Si was upgraded with a bigger intake, camshafts, a raceheader (no catalytic converter), free flowing exhaust, and the car got between 34 and 36 mpg highway. Similarly, the M3 has an intake, raceheader, trackpipe (no cat), exhaust, cams, bigger injectors, and a tune, and that gets 30 mpg on the highway. Coincidence? I think not. Clearly the EPA is trying to screw us out of our miles per gallon and make us pay for more gas, thanks Haliburton (I'm just kidding... ...kind of).

Now that I was thinking about fuel economy and efficiency, I also started thinking about the amount of pollution that cars put out, and the efforts involved in reducing those figures. In the automotive world, there are a number of different strides being taken in different areas, all with a similar goal in mind: reducing carbon emissions. Increased efficiency of engines, different filtration techniques, and hybrid technology all comes to mind.

I'll elaborate more on this, but for now I have class to go to. Second installment later this evening.