Hi everyone,
I went to my second university open day on Saturday to Nottingham. I say second, but my first was also to Nottingham in the spring. I missed the electronics talk because I was being collected to go to Scotland, so on Saturday, I grasped th oppertunity to go and look at the EE deparment.
Wow. Just walking into their workshops made my jaw drop. There were various projects in various states of completeness, some labelled with "Don't touch" and others with massive heatsinks, all surrounded by power supplies and a few oscilloscope here and there. In the corner, they had a bunch of transformers, which I think were to simulate voltages on the National Grid for people doing the Electrical part of the degree.
Then we all took the (very cramped) lift up six floors to have the second talk. The building where Electrical and Electronic Engineering is, is by far the tallest, with about 15 floors. Fortunately, we were told that we rarely have to go above six floors. Saying that, a building like that would make a great place to have a radio club...
Back on topic! The next talk took us to the labs, where there were instruments galore! I'm lucky I didn't start salivating when I glanced around at each work station, with its own computer, couple of hp oscilloscope, and cabinets with what looked like logic analysers and network analysers. We were told that they encourage final year projects to have real-world uses. Rather than just make a robot which moves around for no reason, projects have to have relevence in the real world. The first example was a means of monitoring health of miners for a south African company. A little sensor is placed under the miner's helment and is used to monitor things like sweat, core temperature, etc. Apparently they are also starting to market it as a means of monitoring baby's health, because it is so light and unobtrusive. They recently got a licence to sell it in the US!
Then another medical based project involved measuring the blood flow in a hand. It was like an x-ray head, which you positioned your hand under, and with a click of a button, you had a map of blood flow in your hand in about a second. Just incredible.
We then went to solder a little electronic die, which took me the best part of 30 seconds! But do you know what, I'm really proud of it. It's the first thing I've made in a proper place of engineering and although it's simple and I could knock one up myself, I'm still really proud of it. I know it seems silly.
But what a cool day! Just visiting the place makes me want to study electronics even more!!! Oh rah - let's do some electronics!!!!
I know I want to study electronics, I can't wait to spend four years of my life doing nothing but. Let's just hope I can make it there.
Sparky.
P.S. I'm so pumped right now, it's unbelieveable!
Here's the building, you can just see the other buildings around it, nothing is taller than those other buildings, so you can see why it might be good for a radio club!
I went to my second university open day on Saturday to Nottingham. I say second, but my first was also to Nottingham in the spring. I missed the electronics talk because I was being collected to go to Scotland, so on Saturday, I grasped th oppertunity to go and look at the EE deparment.
Wow. Just walking into their workshops made my jaw drop. There were various projects in various states of completeness, some labelled with "Don't touch" and others with massive heatsinks, all surrounded by power supplies and a few oscilloscope here and there. In the corner, they had a bunch of transformers, which I think were to simulate voltages on the National Grid for people doing the Electrical part of the degree.
Then we all took the (very cramped) lift up six floors to have the second talk. The building where Electrical and Electronic Engineering is, is by far the tallest, with about 15 floors. Fortunately, we were told that we rarely have to go above six floors. Saying that, a building like that would make a great place to have a radio club...
Back on topic! The next talk took us to the labs, where there were instruments galore! I'm lucky I didn't start salivating when I glanced around at each work station, with its own computer, couple of hp oscilloscope, and cabinets with what looked like logic analysers and network analysers. We were told that they encourage final year projects to have real-world uses. Rather than just make a robot which moves around for no reason, projects have to have relevence in the real world. The first example was a means of monitoring health of miners for a south African company. A little sensor is placed under the miner's helment and is used to monitor things like sweat, core temperature, etc. Apparently they are also starting to market it as a means of monitoring baby's health, because it is so light and unobtrusive. They recently got a licence to sell it in the US!
Then another medical based project involved measuring the blood flow in a hand. It was like an x-ray head, which you positioned your hand under, and with a click of a button, you had a map of blood flow in your hand in about a second. Just incredible.
We then went to solder a little electronic die, which took me the best part of 30 seconds! But do you know what, I'm really proud of it. It's the first thing I've made in a proper place of engineering and although it's simple and I could knock one up myself, I'm still really proud of it. I know it seems silly.
But what a cool day! Just visiting the place makes me want to study electronics even more!!! Oh rah - let's do some electronics!!!!
I know I want to study electronics, I can't wait to spend four years of my life doing nothing but. Let's just hope I can make it there.
Sparky.
P.S. I'm so pumped right now, it's unbelieveable!
Here's the building, you can just see the other buildings around it, nothing is taller than those other buildings, so you can see why it might be good for a radio club!