Open Day at the Min.
08/08/2004 05:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
izmeinaIzzie is near the end of her four free days. Oh what bliss it was too. Lots of sunshine and online lurking but bestest of all was today's open day at the Min.
Once a year the university puts on an Open Day to attract unsuspecting young things and potential victims.
This is Izzie's golden opportunity to go lurking amongst the folks at the Mt Moria School of Mines, the nerds in the computer labs and especially all the various engineering departments.
With a free wine tasting or two tossed in with lots of cheese and bikkies, what more could a curious and hungry serpent want?
Last year Iz got to see the concrete blocks being squished till they pop. That was on again this year at 11.30 am and 3pm. But as lazy Izzie did not stick her nose out the door until midday and the wine tasting was from 2.30-3.30 pm - it kind of got put rather low on the Must Do list. Instead, purely by accident, on the way to the Magic Mud demonstrations, came across a lab where instead of squeezing and squishing, they were pulling and stretching. A sort of rack if you like for chains, nuts and bolts, steel strips and various other metallic objects.
They speed up the machine for a bit of drama so that it stretches steel five millimetres in one minute as opposed to the usual two millimetres.
On the computer graphs you got to see the pressure on one axis and the stretch on the other. Usually things started happening after 1.5 tonnes. It was fascinating to see how the pattern on the screen would change shortly before the big bang.
What was really strange was how some of the high tensile bolts could put up with less shit than the so called cheap and nasty corner shop versions and how strange rubbery looking timing belts used in Formula one racing cars were actually stronger than many of the samples of steel strips.
Then there was the fascinating spaghetti bridge competition over in the Civil engineering department. Using only spaghetti and some sort of glue guns, entrants had to build a bridge to cross a model river bank which was slightly shorter than two full strands of spaghetti.
They then got subjected to the load test where a little weight would get hung off the bridge in the middle to see if it was up to scratch. The spaghetti would either break or buckle and then it was back to the drawing board to make a new improved version. The winner of the day is the designer of the lightest bridge that fulfils the design requirements of being long and strong enough.
Next year just might consider entering. If bad Iz had got up a bit earlier today, could have entered also.
There was also a most intriguing exhibition about colours which the Iz will have to leave for later - basically means of classification in various different cultures and coining new everyday words for colours in English to overcome the present discrepencies between the amount of work various everyday words have to do. Pink - evil colour that it is, has a really rather limited range compared to poor green that simply gets overworked and overused and has to account for all sorts of shades from pale mint to emerald.
Some Swedish folks have come up with some colour models and classification that are based much more on appearances and less on in what manner the colours get mixed together. Iz must go to Google and get more stuff as it sounded absolutely fascinating.
Turns out there is even a group called "The Colour Society" that the researcher invited Izzie to join. Sounds like some sort of dogdy fascist DE kind of mob but it is really rather innocent - full of folks like artists, designers, physicists and quilters who just love talking about colours all day long.
Once a year the university puts on an Open Day to attract unsuspecting young things and potential victims.
This is Izzie's golden opportunity to go lurking amongst the folks at the Mt Moria School of Mines, the nerds in the computer labs and especially all the various engineering departments.
With a free wine tasting or two tossed in with lots of cheese and bikkies, what more could a curious and hungry serpent want?
Last year Iz got to see the concrete blocks being squished till they pop. That was on again this year at 11.30 am and 3pm. But as lazy Izzie did not stick her nose out the door until midday and the wine tasting was from 2.30-3.30 pm - it kind of got put rather low on the Must Do list. Instead, purely by accident, on the way to the Magic Mud demonstrations, came across a lab where instead of squeezing and squishing, they were pulling and stretching. A sort of rack if you like for chains, nuts and bolts, steel strips and various other metallic objects.
They speed up the machine for a bit of drama so that it stretches steel five millimetres in one minute as opposed to the usual two millimetres.
On the computer graphs you got to see the pressure on one axis and the stretch on the other. Usually things started happening after 1.5 tonnes. It was fascinating to see how the pattern on the screen would change shortly before the big bang.
What was really strange was how some of the high tensile bolts could put up with less shit than the so called cheap and nasty corner shop versions and how strange rubbery looking timing belts used in Formula one racing cars were actually stronger than many of the samples of steel strips.
Then there was the fascinating spaghetti bridge competition over in the Civil engineering department. Using only spaghetti and some sort of glue guns, entrants had to build a bridge to cross a model river bank which was slightly shorter than two full strands of spaghetti.
They then got subjected to the load test where a little weight would get hung off the bridge in the middle to see if it was up to scratch. The spaghetti would either break or buckle and then it was back to the drawing board to make a new improved version. The winner of the day is the designer of the lightest bridge that fulfils the design requirements of being long and strong enough.
Next year just might consider entering. If bad Iz had got up a bit earlier today, could have entered also.
There was also a most intriguing exhibition about colours which the Iz will have to leave for later - basically means of classification in various different cultures and coining new everyday words for colours in English to overcome the present discrepencies between the amount of work various everyday words have to do. Pink - evil colour that it is, has a really rather limited range compared to poor green that simply gets overworked and overused and has to account for all sorts of shades from pale mint to emerald.
Some Swedish folks have come up with some colour models and classification that are based much more on appearances and less on in what manner the colours get mixed together. Iz must go to Google and get more stuff as it sounded absolutely fascinating.
Turns out there is even a group called "The Colour Society" that the researcher invited Izzie to join. Sounds like some sort of dogdy fascist DE kind of mob but it is really rather innocent - full of folks like artists, designers, physicists and quilters who just love talking about colours all day long.
