Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Pressure start to flare up in me. I could feel it.... dammit!!!

Went to laboratory since this morning until lunch time to conduct two types of lab works which the purposes are to determine the coefficient of discharge and the determination of laminar and turbulent flow. These lab works are the compulsory part of the Hydraulic subject that I’m running now and it is a prerequisite to each student to get the first class marks. After all, it’s one of the terms and condition for the student to graduate from this UEL program.

teaching flume

We form a group in couple weeks ago before we could start the research. The 1st activity is quite easy as we have done and experienced before. By using a teaching flume, we are requested to take a reading as a raw data before we have to transfer into the particular equation. There are various types of weirs available that we have to install and uninstall before we could note down all data. This work is progressing very smooth as everyone able to understand all kinds of applications and also the function itself.

minor part of the laminar and turbulent flow machine.

2nd activity is quite tough where this is the 1st time we do a research by using that machine. It’s not too hard to implement, but lacking of information and blurry instruction didn’t make things any better. Plus, once we plan to start the work, the machine is not working until the maintenance came to take a look on it. After few minutes times, the maintenance able to figure out an error on that machines. The “emergency Stop” was stuck into the socket and consequently, the electric power couldn’t be connected.

Even the machine can be function now, but it still not fully recovered. There still a drawback where the laminar tube still can’t be use. So, we skipped that part and proceed to the next one. Something is not right with the reading’s mark because it moves too fast and over the scale (we have to use a stopwatch to count every second when the mark on the reading’s scale arises). So, we decided to stop and wait until the other group turns to see what they able to do. Plus, the lecturer is not around to guide us.

Few minutes waiting is not passed us freely, we do a short exploration of each part of the machine until another group arrived. Have a quick discussion with them and let them conduct this 2nd experiment. Initially, same thing goes with them where they couldn’t take a reading. Luckily, there are a few brilliant people able to understand how to conduct the machine properly (they spot an error and they are the most intelligent people in my class). We do it once again until we are able to obtain the data (to be frank, I’m still doubt with the results).

Next step that I’m going to proceed are to analyze the data, take pictures of every single apparatus, calculate some particular equation and combine them to form a complete report. For the laminar data, my lecturer will take a responsible by spoonfeed us. So, I’ll work with series of numbers again.

*back to work*

No comments: