[29-31; 13-14; 34] In addition to applying for internships, I’m taking a course in machine design, materials, heat transfer, vibrations and bio fluids. I received some good scores on my exams in vibrations and materials.
[42-45; 48-52; 54-55; 116-118] In vibrations, we are learning about calculating different frequencies, when, for example, a bridge is vibrating. So, if it’s really windy outside the bridge can start to vibrate, so it can collapse. Of course, you don’t want that to happen. The professor uses PowerPoint presentations, and sometimes he may start to show a YouTube clip with a bridge that’s vibrating. And then, he’s breaking down this bridge into simpler components, use like a square or something like that. And then, he says this has a mass, and you have a spring component that is this value, and then you can get these vibrations, looking at these equations. We also completed about seven quizzes throughout the semester and a small project about water towers. For the project, we had to calculate what the maximum diameter or the minimum diameter you can have for the water tower not to break while vibrating.
[59-67] The professor for the materials class also uses maybe 50% PowerPoint and the remainder of the material is shown on the board. He’s refers to a lot to real life scenarios in class. For example, although a material is really good, in some cases the company won’t be able to make money. So, therefore you can use this alloy instead. The lab is first it starts off with one, and a half hour lecture, so he’s just talking different materials, and different composites. And then, we’re going down in the lab, and we’re in the lab for maybe one hour. So far, we have done foil, and yeah. I don’t know what others, but it was some plastic, and epoxy and stuff.
[104-109] With the heat transfer class we’re working mostly with specific temperature, heat flux, and convention. We just finished a Matlab project where they wanted to find the temperature distribution. If you want to use convection, or heat temperatures the Matlab program that we coded would enter the temperature distribution of it.