Blog Marco

Holy crap. Rail guns exist? It looks like the US Navy will soon have the technology to shoot anything in North Korea from a ship with a rail gun. A rail gun basically shoots a bullet or some projectile with EM energy (Electro-Magnetic) instead of the usual gun powder. Here's more information: PopSci. I thought this type of technology was just Science Fiction. (They have these rail guns on ships in the TV series Stargate)

Its been known for a while that Australia is undergoing a shortage in engineers across all fields. Companies are resorting to importing skills into Australia. Perhaps this would raise engineering incomes in future?

Skills shortage threatens Queensland projects

"Engineers Australia has warned that despite commitments of huge funding for Queensland infrastructure projects, the delivery of many projects will be jeopardised without access to enough professional engineers.

"Speaking ahead of a presentation to the Queensland Infrastructure Summit in Brisbane last week, Engineers Australia chief executive Peter Taylor said: "the limited availability of professional engineering skills will be a major factor in determining whether or not the huge infrastructure programs for Queensland can be implemented.

""The number of engineers graduating from our universities across Australia has remained static for a decade and when the massive expansion of infrastructure projects needs the skills base to underpin their delivery, we have been caught short.

""Even though the Australian government's own list of migrant occupations in demand shows that there are significant shortages of civil, mechanical, electrical power and resource engineering, there is no recognition of the connection between that list and the inability of our own education system to produce more engineers," he said."

When a system is in the steady state, a sinusiondal input generates a sinusoidal output at the same frequency but the two sinusoids differ in amplitude and phase angle. The differences are a function of frequency.

Sinusoids can be represented by phasors. One part magnitude, one part phase.

Phasors can be represented in three ways: Polar form, Rectangular form and the Exponential form from Euler's Formula.

You can plot a phasor in two ways: As a function of frequency and on a polar plot. Usually when the magnitude or phase is plotted against frequency it is converted to decibels by taking the log (base 10) and multiply by 20 and plotting it on a log scaled frequency plot - i.e. bode plot.

From Control Systems Engineering by Norman S. Nise

I was in a laboratory tutorial this morning learning how to play around with MATLAB to obtain the controller specs from knowing the transfer function of the plant i.e. the Maze Rover (from which the transfer function was obtained experimentally from a step response as well as a series of input and output magnitude and phase measurements to form a bode plot, which in turn would give the means to the derivation of the transfer function for the maze rover.

Assume that the transfer function you derived from your plant or maze rover was:
0.5
---------
s^2 + 2 s

Today we formally finished all our formal lectures for Signals and Systems and it also marks the first day to begin our group project - a.k.a "lab #6". The objectives of the lab are:

"1) To obtain an s-domain block diagram model of the maze rover – that is, to synthesize its transfer function of observing its input/output behaviour."

What does that mean? We need to make up a transfer function (out/in) in the frequency domain (s-domain) into a block diagram model given some design constraints. We would obtain the transfer function of the back box – i.e. the maze rover (a little motorized car with a controller/plant setup) by testing out input / output behaviour. (By feeding specified inputs, measuring output then plotting a bode plot)

Check out this Automated Student Bedroom made by Zack Anderson from MIT. Website comes complete with YouTube videos of his gadget in action. Its amazing... And also check out Zack's resume. This guy is really driven... and smart - given his 4.5 GPA. No wonder he's a student in the world's best Engineering faculty. If you want to check out some of MIT's classes (FREE!) check out their opencourseware website.

I went on a site visit to the OneSteel Sydney Steel Mill a few weeks back

I went on a site visit to the OneSteel Sydney Steel Mill a few weeks back with Engineers Australia. The picture shows the RED HOT billets coming out of the plant to be naturally cooled and stacked. I went to their last regional site visit to the RAAF Richmond base to check out their Hercules aircraft. Finding that site visit interesting, (and motivating) I signed up to this site visit. (As long as its free - I'm there!)

I took this photo (K750i) in one of our labs for Signals and Sytems. (I took a photo from a lab last semester in Advanced Maths and Physics and another lab with a monochromator)The picture shows a display from a Digital Oscilloscope showing a sine wave and another smaller wave which is a sine wave convolved (convoluted!) with a square wave. Signals and Systems is fun! It's a tough course.

My old Lane Cove Tunnel Helmet. My work experience that is part of my engineering degree.

I've previously covered the lane cove collapse in the following articles:

More on the Lane Cove Tunnel Collapse

Update on the Lane Cove Tunnel Incident

Sydney Lane Cove Tunnel Collapses

Mr P.K. taught me today that:

If the input source i.e. voltage souce is going into the negative terminal of an op amp it is an inverting op amp. If it is going into the positive terminal, it is a non-inverting terminal.

The non-inverting amp gain is 1+ (R2/R1) and conversely the inverting amp is (-r2/r1).

Thanks PK! (A CASS member)

Towards the end of a three hour computer lab I tend to get distracted.

This computer labratory was about quantum mechanics and in this particular computer screen there are four quantum wells present. These wells are of depth -380eV. Each quantum well was about 0.75nm (yes nanometres!).

Those squiggly lines you see are the energies for that particular quantum state.

Why are we learning this stuff? I have no clue... I found the lab very tedious and laborious... The only way my partner and I could find out what we were actually doing was by asking multiple questions to the lecturer. And I do mean multiple... like every 3 minutes or so! But really... this subject is a part of the Electrical major of the Bachelor of Engineering. I guess this topic ties in with the fact that everything is linked - from what we see - the macro view of things to the micro - or rather the nano/femtoview of the world. (Yes femto - thats 10^-15. I was actually guessinf what fs meant at the start of the subject. Little did I know that fs stood for femtoseconds - just like ms for milliseconds! Well I didn't really expect to see fs!)

This photo was taken out of boredom from a CA tutorial a few days ago. Gerard was once again going off topic (not that there is anything wrong with that) but it was getting way off topic that I was starting to daydream...

This photo is of the reflection off Andrew's Sunglasses.

Photo taken with a Sony Ericsson K750i, a 2 megapixel mobile phone camera. Curves in Photoshop to achieve the desired effect.

This photo was taken during a Physics lab where we were measuring the wavelength of light using a bank of different coloured LEDs and a monochromator.

As a student member (StudIEAust) of IEAust (Institution of Engineers Australia) I was invited to go on a site tour of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) base at Richmond in NSW Australia. I’ve received many invitations in the past, but this time I wanted to give it a go and see what I could get out of the whole visit. (And also it seemed like a little more interesting than the other site visits – like seeing the M7 which is part of Sydney’s orbital road. And having seen and been into a tunnel being built I wanted to see something that wasn’t related to civil engineering)

The RAAF base at Richmond NSW is located about 40 kilometres north west of Sydney and is the base for the 33rd, 36rd and 37th squadron. The 33rd squadron is responsible for the Boeing 707’s, which is an aging fleet of aircraft used for transporting 150 or so troops to where they are needed. The 36th squadron covers the C130-H better known as the ‘Hercules’ which we all hear about so often in the news. The 37th squadron is responsible for the new generation C130-J - a cargo aircraft that the Australian Defense Force (ADF) purchased to replace an obsolete model of C130 (E class?) and compared to the C130-H aircraft, this one is full of the ‘latest’ gear with computers and the like… (I say ‘latest’ with apostrophe marks considering how fast technology moves today, this four year old aircraft should be out dated now)

Trying to keep focused on Circuit Analysis for a three hour session is a challenge.

A summary of three hours work:
1. T-parameters, H-parameters, Z-parameters, Y-parameters; (Note to self: How do you do matrices? - I'm supposed to know them from first year)

2. Example with a Capacitor and Inductor. (Hmm... so that's what steady state meant...)

3. Method of Undetermined Coefficients (This was where I started to drift off...)

And, this was what I had to resort to (to keep awake)... taking a picture of my "Spirax" Note Book Spines. I also took a snap of a couple of calculators but thats another story...