Resin Day 4

Currently we are busy preparing the moulds for our new baby, Sunswift IV, which is looking sexy.

High temp resin has been used on our moulds making. It’s a kind of sticky and honey like stuff and it smells disgusting. I actually hate it but we have to finish the moulds as soon as possible. Jono is a really great team leader. He was there every time. And so did I. I’m not saying that I am a good team member because it really gets me sick and my finger started becoming black, although we wore 3 pairs of gloves when working on it.

Tomorrow will be the resin day 4 for the bottom shell. We call it Sam. We found there were several areas on the sides of the mould that tracked big bubbles in, which is very bad. It means the fiberglass was not actually attached on the aluminium honeycomb core. If just leaving it like that, the stiffness of the whole mould could be not enough and it could lead to the shape deformation when making car body on it. Jono decided to cut it out and re-attach 3 layers of fiberglass for each of the cutting area. We got big job to do tomorrow and I hope Sam will be a perfect Sunswift product.

Join the Solar Racing Team of UNSW

 

I joined the team, today.

Two events were held by UNSW Solar Racing Team today: Sunswift III Harbour Bridge Drive, BBQ at Bronte bay.

Impression to Sunswifters (Team members): brilliant, passionate, professional, organized.

I don’t know what will happen on me after working with this outstanding team which is from the University of New South Wales. I hope I can join them as soon as possible, on the real meaning.

The biggest event for solar racing is the coming World Solar Challenge. To prepare for it, we are making a completely new solar vehicle, Sunswift IV, a bat car.

 

Here are some relevant short videos (descended by publishing dates):

Published on November 28, 2008

Published on January 27, 2008

Published on October 22, 2007

Published on October 18, 2007

*Nuon Solar Racing Team

UNSW Sunswift III Documentary:

Thank you uncle and Mark Twain

Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Relationships between science and technology

I have had some thinking on science and technology which I am learning. To short what I thought, 4 points are listed below, in addition, they are related.

• The source of technology is science; the source of science is the nature.
• If you see the relationships in the nature more clearly, you do science better; if you apply the science more effectively, you do technology better.
• To comprehend science is more important than to use science; to create technology is more important than to enjoy the technology.
  (Using science = Creating technology)
• Science belongs to the nature or universe; technology belongs to human beings.

Clean coal?

Honestly I am not quite familiar with the clean coal technology. Maybe it is new or just to me.

As results from some online sources, the so-called clean coal is not clean as we imagined that it is carbon free and so on. The reason for this is that burning coal still has greenhouse gases emission problem. It is not truly completely clean. However, there is a huge coal reserve on this planet, such as in China and India, and if the major energy supply can not be altered to producing from renewable resources, using coal will be the only “convenient” way out from the energy crisis.

Moreover, a piece of news on the carbon capture has been reported recently. I guess there should be some shared ideas between clean coal tech and this one.

Shocked exchange rates

The implication of the numbers is much better than words here.

Update:

Rank of universities in Australia (2008)

TimesOnline just published the rank of world universities of 2008 and here I filter out 9 Australian universities in the top 200. The world ranks are in ( ).

1. Australian National University (16)
2. The University of Sydney (37)
3. The University of Melbourne (38 )
4. University of Queensland (43)
5. University of New South Wales (45)
6. Monash University (47)
7. The University of Western Australia (83)
8. University of Adelaide (106)
9. Macquarie University (182)

Skype is not reliable any more

Just received a message from New York Times that text-messages via Tom-Skype, the Skype server in China, are monitored by wireless firms and Chinese Internet police. Even if you use a official edition of the Skype out of China, it does not mean that your Skype is definitely save. Here is the last paragraph of the news and this is the original report.

Mr. Villeneuve downloaded the messages, decrypted them and used machine translation software to convert the Chinese messages to English. He then used word frequency counts to identify the key words that were flagging the messages. The exact criteria used by the filtering software is still unclear, he said, because some messages on the servers contained no known key word. He said that in addition to capturing the Skype messages sent between Tom-Skype users, international conversations were recorded as well, meaning that users of standard Skype software outside China were also vulnerable to the surveillance system when they had text conversations with Chinese users.

I remember when I use Skype it always shows that my typed messages are coded and the privacy is protected. Thus if this surveillance is truly existed, it must be strongly condemned and unforgivable.

Writing Room

Since I moved here, an around 15 square meters small bedroom, I’ve been changed and got more close to Cameo’s life. She is the former tenant of this room and also one of my good friends.

Soooo what I’ve been changed? I can shut the door and windows being closed and stay inside for a holy whole day, just concentrating on my essay, except going to the restroom and finding some food. It is so like what Cameo did before, writing her paper in front of her super laptop. I wonder if I’m gonna keep doing like this until graduate or move out, but anyway this condition is good to my study. At least, it’s like what my mom expected.

Well, I wanna call this lovely room: Writing Room.

Sorts of teachers

Today afternoon, I knew what I was cooking but I didn’t know why I was thinking about the sorts of teachers.

In my opinion, there are three kinds of teachers:

• teachers who teach knowledge;
• teachers who teach methods to learn knowledge;
• teachers who just give you a correct direction in study.

In my life, there are so many teachers who are like the first kind and I could rarely have the second sort of teachers. I always looking for the third one, but unfortunately I can’t. I think maybe that teacher is just myself. I have to figure the road out by myself.

Anyway, the most correct thing right now is to finish my lovely dinner. :D