Common test is in a weeks time, oh well, it was supposed to be 2 weeks time but my lecturer cum course manager decided to push his module one week early cos he doesn’t want us to study other modules and pang seh his module nor does he want us to study his module and pang seh other modules. And this module is a module which he pushs all the grades to only 3 components which makes this common test paper to be 30% instead of 20% and one class test to be 20% instead of small 5% tests, not forgetting the final year paper is 50% instead of the normal 40%. Really starting to feel the urgency to start studying for it but I just can’t move, as usual. I really have learnt a lot of things in the working society in chemical engineering from him. He is I guess the only lecturer I have met that doesn’t give answer no matter how you beg him to, but he will only tell you the steps into getting the answer, but there is a story behind it. Here it goes.
He has a friend who was working in industry as a chemical engineer and one day, he needs to check if one of the big columns needs maintenance or not. He did his calculations and stuff and found out that there is 2 trays missing in the column. He went to his boss and told him that it needs maintenance as his calculations showed that 2 trays were “missing” in the column. His boss asked him to check another few more times as if it needs maintenance, the company has to get the contractor to come with cranes to open the thing up and stopping the plant itself will cost millions of dollars a day. That guy went back and calculated many times manually, used stimulation programmes to calculate and asked different people to calculate for him. After much calculations, he went back to his boss and told him that he still calculated that there is 2 trays missing and could even locate the exact area that the 2 trays were missing at. He couldn’t sleep for days over this as it would cost tonnes and tonnes of money if his calculations were wrong. When the whole column was opened up, the 2 trays were really “missing”, well, there were bent upwards due to the pressure at the bottom acting on them. Moral of the story: Who is to tell you if your answer is correct or wrong in such situations when the column can’t communicate with you and tell you that your calculatons are right or wrong, and in exams too. Get your answer, check through and be confident about it.
I really respect this lecturer. He is the only lecturer (I have seen so far) who brings ONLY A MARKER to tutorial lesson and can get the whole tutorial going.
Well, I need to get started. Woke up at 8 till now still haven’t done anything. Haha.
Zhaos.
i finished typing this entry at 11:07 AM
all about me
spencer
twentyone
26 sep 1987
ngee ann poly
spencer_wez@hotmail.com
