Semester 3 2011

The semester 3 was pretty interesting since we had many lab sessions involved.... Digital electronics was the subject which had many interesting lab sessions with a Programmable IC... Following are some pics of it....

The main lesson i learnt in this semester is the seriousness of the course I'm taking. Being an Engineer is a very tough cause. I realized it after some long chats i had with a friend of mine. University is merely the taste of what I will be doing in the future. We study many subjects but what i realized was all knowledge cannot be attained by just listening to lecturers.. Every tiny detail should be thoroughly examined and read.. Because in future when I might receive a certain problem it would be a global problem. Some students sadly think that knowing “How to do a SUM” is the most critical part. If that’s the issue they are so mistaken. We all should know what is the point of doing each and every sum.. What happens from the sum? Those are the problems we should figure out.. Lets take Fourier series … We did so many sums on it.. But if I ask Very less amount of people know to answer “Why do we use Fourier Transforms?” .. That’s the most critical question that someone should ask himself/herself. Short answer is ‘converting a time domain function to a frequency domain function’. These are the problems every Engineering student should discuss since when we Engineers receive a global problem in future we should use many theories and sums collectively and solve the issue. If we don’t know what a sum does how could we try resolve any problem through calculation.

We should be able to look at the past and see the disasters which occurred due to tiny mistakes which were done causing massive losses.

One of my favorite examples is the Ariane 5 rocket which faced major disaster due to a tiny software error. Long story short, Ariane 5 rocket was carrying scientific satellites designed to establish precisely how the earth’s magnetic field interacts with solar winds. This Rocket was built for the European Space agency. And after 37seconds into the flight they realized something was going wrong because the nozzles were swiveling in a way that it shouldn’t. After 40 seconds they realized something was seriously wrong so they took all their guts and pressed the self-destruct button of the rocket and exploded it causing a loss of US$370 million… Why did this happen. In normal terms the Software used for the Ariane 5 was from their previous successful rocket the Ariane 4. In a certain calculations they used only 32bit number conversion system since the programmers predicted that most of the bits would be zeroes in the 32Bit system. This was a great software for Ariane 4 but what they didn’t realize is that Ariane 5 is more fast and has a greater acceleration which caused an overflow in the 32bit conversions and it lead to such a big disaster. All because of a tiny mistake which was overlooked by the team. If you want a detail and far more technical description of the Ariane 5 disaster please do refer to the following link :- [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5_Flight_501 ]

Some Images of the Ariane 5…

The Ariane 5 Standing tall...

The Glorious Launch...

End of its course merely 40seconds after lift off.

When i observe the above images it makes me super sad since i see the effort of so many Engineers go to rubble just because of a tiny software problem. But everyone learnt their lesson even though the price they payed is simply too much. If not for that error the Engineers time consumed on this project would have been completely worthwhile. But this is life.. We should learn from our mistakes and make sure things like this would never happen again...

Semester 2 part 2

The second part of the semester was a great boost for me.. specially since i had many chances to visit the country area and i got the chance to perform well in my favorite subject which is maths :) but still my greatest enemy of stress still prevails... i took a big decision of changing the place i live which is a great change in my university life.. and i hope the new place would improve my university life standards :) i am currently at home in my home country so i cant wait until i go back and be ready for my next up coming semester :D

Semester 2 (Part 1)

Semester 2 was extremely fast moving compared to my first semester. Usually the first half of the semester is a time we could relax until the exam heat burns us down.... But when semester 2 started i realised that my the work was more tough and the speed the lessons go on wasn't low either.. Since the second week of studies work has been pressurizing me all along. These are the subjects i selected to do for my Semester 2.

Work has been tough since then. My 3rd week Maths and Mechanics of structures Quiz's went on extremely well due to the constant revision of work since i was scared id do silly mistakes.

The midsemester exam was not so easy as it sounded. It was rather confusing since my math lecturer sent an email telling the paper would be hard so prepare for the worst and then when i saw the paper it was extremely easy as compared to what i had in my head. I am waiting for my result of that paper at the moment :) Then came my Mechanics of structures test which was extremely challenging. But according to the moment i guess i faced it at my best. During my first half of the second semester i really started liking Engineering Mathematics 2 since my lecturer Mrs Mary Seibu Jacob was really good in teaching and her teaching methods really do motivate students in a great manner. Really nice to be a student under her.

Then came my long awaited subject which i knew before i started this degree... It was Robotics & Mechatronics project 2. A part of this subject is that we should build a lego Robot which would perform a certain task which would be explained by our lecturer and we should not only build it, we should also write a program code which would make the robot function. This would be the perfect integration between the mechanical and software engineering knowledge into one machine. The following images are related to this lego-robot project

The Above pictures include the box which we got with the things we have to build the robot. And The letters displayed in the AX-11 is just from a small program code ( Printf("") ) .. The robot is still in the process of being completed.

Then came the workshop which was also a part of the Robotic & Mechatronics project 2 where we had to control 2 amazing machines. The most important part was operating the Lathe Machine. Which was extremely interesting and we had to make a weird shaped bolt which took a lot of precision, concentration and time. The following images are from the Workshop and the machines we used.

Operating the machine was really interesting. The following image is what was the outcome of our hard work :) This was totally made out of a rod which has a diameter of 23mm.

Memories From the First Semester.

The first semester was a real eye opener. So much of experiences I can think about.

First of all i would start with C programming. C programming was one of my favourite subject besides mathematics. Here are some Programs which i did just for the fun of it :)

Then came the subject Manual Drawing and Cad drawings. Autocad was really interesting but manual Drawing was tough for me at the start. But then it came out well and after alot of practise i faced the exam really well and following is the image of what i drew for my exam which i got 31/35 .

This is part 1 of the exam which contained a 3rd angle projection view and Isometric view drawings.

This is the final question of the exam which we had to do an Orthogonal Projection.

Autocad was another interesting milestone which i passed. This is one drawing i did through Autocad :)

The First Experiences!!!!

This is my first year second semester as a student in Swinburne Sarawak and my first semester was rather a tough one since i was extremely stressed since living alone in a foreign country was an all new thing to me and faced many hardships thanks to certain people who were around me................................

:) But it says everything happens for a reason :) and life does move on. So i will be hoping to keep an update on my university work and special milestones since this is just my second semester. And also i should mention my course is BEng(Robotics & Mechatronics)/BSc(Computer Science and Software Engineering). So if you are interested in either one of these fields i hope my blog would be helpful up to a certain extent :) Enjoy!!