My project involves building a learning centre that includes a "small electrical workshop". What is that?

Question

This learning centre has computer rooms, theatre halls, meeting rooms, and so on. It functions as an engineering multimedia library.

No description is available for "small electrical workshop" so some ideas would be great. THANKS!

Answer 1

That seems a bit unclear to me as well, but if this is a learning center in a university, it would be valuable to setup fixed demos like in a museum. If this is a place intended to be used as a "workshop" then you'd be basically providing fundamental tools: Meters, power sources, workbenches, wire, wire snips, Radio shack like supplies, and so on for other people's projects.

Because this is a learning center, I'd assuming you want to setup museum like displays that just provide a fixed demo of fundamental principles. Freshmen, typically need to fully understand the basics, so I'd focus on the following concepts and their demonstrations:

Inter-relationship between the following and analogies to water power. It could talk about the similarities in a historical perspective. Prior to the use of electricity, water wheels would be used to mechanically transfer power to mills (using long shafts across the rafters of buildings) and other mechanical devices. Here are some electrical concepts:
- Voltage (similar to the force in a water hose)
- Amperage (capacity/size of a water hose)
- Resistence (force against voltage is like friction in a hose)
- Power (ability to do work. capability of moving something against a force)
- Work (ability to do work over time)

It would be interesting to talk about efficiency and the differences between alternating current and direct current. It would also be interesting to talk about how AC is delivered on three lines in alternating sine waves that are offset by 1/3 from each other. Most households only use two lines, whereas heavy industrial users receive three lines of power. Edison was in favor of DC power because it was much safer, but the voltage died over a short distance because of the resistance of wire. Today, we use AC because it is easy to boost the voltage using transformers.

A section on motors and generators would be interesting as well since ultimately some power is used by motors and all of the power is generated by huge generators (which are essentially the same device used in reverse, but optimized for their purpose). The size of motors is directly related to their ability to shed heat. Motors can be speed regulated or current (amperage) regulated. In some applications, you want a motor to always go at a regulated speed, like in a conveyor system. In other cases, you want the force of the motor to be constant. A feedback loop using speed or current would be a more sophisticated and perhaps entertaining display. Feedback would be an upperclassman level course for engineers. If you allow people to set feedback levels you can demonstrate things like a stable system, an unstable oscillating system, and perhaps even a demonstration of chaos theory.

Rather than making this a physical setup, which could be very pricey, you might consider developing simulations that could be displayed on large LCDs. Perhaps you could find some flashy programs that are already written that could be presented on large screens. Otherwise, it would be less expensive to hire a summer intern to write these simulations for you. This would conserve space and could be extended over many years. (You can drive multple LCD screens from one computer using a multi-port computer video card from a vendor like Matrox.)

Once you understand the purpose of the "small electrical workshop" you will be able to get with a professor and a model builder or contractor to try to come up with an area that meets the original intention of this space.

Answer 2

As for change I can believe in - he closed Gitmo. Good start. That's more than I would have expected from the Republicans. Give the man a chance - I'm withholding judgement for at least a year before assessing anything the man does. It's a bit ridiculous to start complaining the first month. Out of the 2 choices presented, Obama was the best by far. You don't commit as many of the crimes the neocons did and then allow them free reign for another 4 years - sorry. To Rizzo, I'm glad he's taking the troops out of Iraq. Maybe you're one of these people who has a hard time telling the difference between middle eastern countries, but I'm not. We had absolutely no reason to be in Iraq. I was angry at Bush for (among a vast many other things) starting a war under false pretense. And the "Patriot Act", and "No Child Left Behind", but we'll save that for another time. We did however, have a very good reason to be in Afghanistan - remember? Bin Laden? The guy who supposedly masterminded the whole 9-11 shebang? Or have you conveniently forgotten that along with the rest of the neocons who have business holdings in oil companies.