"Exams are a poor gauge of just how good you are"
Says this chap. My lecturer for Kinematics and Dynamics of Machinery , and my future systems integration for Robotics lecturer (He's Taiwanese and is very critical of the Singaporean way of doing things...but that os another post altogether).
Allow me to rant on a module that is completely irrelevant to you (unless you happen to be a first year mechatronics student , in which case prepare yourself for the most boring exam ever.
Cause if there is something i hate , its a no brainer exam which insults you further by making you go through pointless calculations which even a monkey can do by holding the pen in its nose and while scratching its arse.
In basic terms , Kinematics and Dynamics of Machinery is all about mechanisms such as multi-jointed links which are the core of any moving mechanism.
For instance , your weight machines. You know the one where you pull a handle or something and a weight is moved somewhere? Ever wondered how you design a mechanism for that? We have theories that govern how links and joints are connected to make the machine.
Your basic 4 bar mechanism. Ok , in a nutshell , by using geometry and some obscure theory we can govern how this mechanism behaves simply by varying the ratio of the lengths of the links with each other. Which is very very interesting.
But the part i hate is this. There are no practicals.
I mean, i would love it if we were given a challenge to build some form of mechanism for a practical real life application using whatever we learnt , and that plus a few more projects would count towards like 60 or 70 % of our final grade.
Noooo....
What they do is, give you a paper with redundant questions which do not test your mental capabiulities , but test how much you can write down and draw in 2 hours 30 mins.
Ok, i admit, i could not finish 25% of one question. There. I said it.
I'm so pissed i could not, cause I really knew how to do it. But ran out of time.
WHY???
Cause i had to sit down and draw 4 stupid diagrams which ate up 90 minutes, diagrams i could perfect and color and render in 3D for the examiners if the had given me access to SolidWorks and an IBM laptop.
That being said. I want practicals. I want to dabble in REAL engineering. Not write some paper which dwells on redundant technology and contains questions like:
And i could not agree more mate
Allow me to rant on a module that is completely irrelevant to you (unless you happen to be a first year mechatronics student , in which case prepare yourself for the most boring exam ever.
Cause if there is something i hate , its a no brainer exam which insults you further by making you go through pointless calculations which even a monkey can do by holding the pen in its nose and while scratching its arse.
In basic terms , Kinematics and Dynamics of Machinery is all about mechanisms such as multi-jointed links which are the core of any moving mechanism.
For instance , your weight machines. You know the one where you pull a handle or something and a weight is moved somewhere? Ever wondered how you design a mechanism for that? We have theories that govern how links and joints are connected to make the machine.
Your basic 4 bar mechanism. Ok , in a nutshell , by using geometry and some obscure theory we can govern how this mechanism behaves simply by varying the ratio of the lengths of the links with each other. Which is very very interesting.
But the part i hate is this. There are no practicals.
I mean, i would love it if we were given a challenge to build some form of mechanism for a practical real life application using whatever we learnt , and that plus a few more projects would count towards like 60 or 70 % of our final grade.
Noooo....
What they do is, give you a paper with redundant questions which do not test your mental capabiulities , but test how much you can write down and draw in 2 hours 30 mins.
Ok, i admit, i could not finish 25% of one question. There. I said it.
I'm so pissed i could not, cause I really knew how to do it. But ran out of time.
WHY???
Cause i had to sit down and draw 4 stupid diagrams which ate up 90 minutes, diagrams i could perfect and color and render in 3D for the examiners if the had given me access to SolidWorks and an IBM laptop.
That being said. I want practicals. I want to dabble in REAL engineering. Not write some paper which dwells on redundant technology and contains questions like:
"Please calculate all the forces at the joints of the given mechanism , given that every link experiences an acceleration at its centre of gravity at and angle of 230 degrees (20 marks)"
Sounds difficult , but trust me, its not. Its just TEDIOUS. And a complete waste of time. Cause if i were a REAL engineer, i would place pressure gauges in every joint,hook it up to a laptop and show a realtime variation in the forces as the mechanism works.
Having said that, thank god i'm done with it and will be moving on to some real stuff next semester.
Cheers from the,
Matrix
Sounds difficult , but trust me, its not. Its just TEDIOUS. And a complete waste of time. Cause if i were a REAL engineer, i would place pressure gauges in every joint,hook it up to a laptop and show a realtime variation in the forces as the mechanism works.
Having said that, thank god i'm done with it and will be moving on to some real stuff next semester.
Cheers from the,
Matrix
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