- Roles:
- Rebecca Valencia: Technology Background Researcher/Record-Data Keeper
- Tamila Shalumova: Experimenter/Instrument Wielder
- Zach Ward: Historical/ Economic Researcher
- Our group plans on investigating exactly how a jump drive uses electricity in its ability to store information quickly, conveniently, and safely in a static state form (meaning that there are no moving parts which make up the body of the jump drive itself). The modern flash drive is derivative of past forms of memory saving technologies, including floppy drives and zip disks. However, the science that goes into a jump drive has been miniaturized and maximized. We will be investigating how electricity and semiconductor technology have evolved in such a way that we can now carry 4 GB or more of memory in our pockets.
- We plan on utilizing the Watts Up Pro electricity measuring device to perform a series of experiments where we 1) figure out the computer’s baseline electricity usage level 2) measure the electricity output whilst the jump is uploading and downloading information. We will then subtract the difference in order to discover how much electricity the jump drive itself must use in order to carry these tasks. We will also examine how price of jump drive and level of memory have had an inverse relationship over the years. Using this information, we may be able to predict the price of jump drives in the next 5 years. We will meet each Thursday night as needed around dinner time so that we may perform our initial tasks of researching the technology behind jump drives, collecting and analyzing data, and finally, completing the price chart.
- We expect that the prices of USB drives have gone down as the size of the memory capacity has gone up over the years. We do not expect the USB drive to consume a great deal of power, considering that most external drives do not use a source other than the computer unless they are larger than 500 GB.
Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/86/SanDisk_Cruzer_Micro.png