Tubelight: 07/01/2007

If the reader might have enough patience to actually scroll down to one of my pervious posts, titled ‘Blown Fuse’ in which the author(which refers to me) has so accurately portrayed the plight of innocent and angelic(and certain not so innocent or angelic) first year engineering students in the wiring lab, you might find that more than one of the gentlemen who were kind enough to comment had warned him about the impending doom that was called ‘EEE lab’(Pera kettale summa adhirudhilla?!). Whew! That was one long sentence, wasn’t it? Anyway, this post is about the author’s (referring to me, again) experiences in EEE lab, or Machines lab, as we call it.

They say hell is a real unpleasant place. I mean if you want to have a nice mug of cold coffee with a friend and enjoy a nice chat, hell, definitely is not the first place you will consider for venue. I, in fact would have it at the bottom of my ‘List of Places to Have a Nice Chat With a Friend’. The obvious reason being the fact, that hell, being hot, would not keep your cold coffee cold for a very long time. The other more obvious reason would be the fact that you ought to be dead first in order to step into that place. I discovered soon that the above statement need not be necessarily true, i.e. you need not be dead at all in order to enter hell. Oh yes, I was very much alive when I entered EEE lab the first time.

The standard procedure inside EEE lab is as follows:

Enter lab with your observation book ready for the day’s experiment and the record for the previous week’s experiment, failing which you are thrown out.
Apply the lab’s seal on the last page of the record and observation.
Answer the attendance and move over to the table containing the equipment for the day’s experiment.
Write the name plate details of the motor/generator/transformer you are going to perform the experiment on, in your observation book. Also calculate the ranges for the various meters and other measuring apparatus you will need to do the experiment. Fill these details in the circuit diagram and in the ‘Apparatus Required’ table.
Pick a staff member of your choice and get your circuit diagram valued by him or her. Also finish the viva voce test by answering their questions connected to the day’s experiment. The choice of staff doesn’t matter much unless your preparation is perfect. If one deducts marks for the circuit diagram, the other does the same for viva voce. If you’ve prepared well, you’d be wise to choose the person who deducts marks for viva voce.
Fill in a requisition slip for the apparatus you need and get it signed by a staff member. Hand it in and receive the apparatus you need.
Give the connections as given in the circuit diagram and have it verified by a staff member. After that, switch on the supply. If you failed to get the connections verified and the fuse blows, you get thrown out of the lab. (If you get the connections verified by a staff member and the fuse STILL BLOWS, they don’t throw the staff member out, though. You get scolded, instead.)
Proceed with the experiment.
After its done, sit down to do the calculations, if there is still time left.
Get the observation corrected within 2 days of completing the experiment.

That was quite a list, whew…! It took me 17 minutes to finish. Well, anyway you can see from the list that you have more ways to get out of the lab than to stay there. But the high levels of strictness is in fact, necessary, I should say. The reason being that people deal with high voltage equipment over there and must be careful with what they do over there. It is too early for me to write anything further about the lab, having attended only two lab sessions. Maybe will have more to write about it when I attend more classes.

Why I like EEE lab: