For the last couple of days, I was residing at Loughborough University experiencing what the university is like and what their large variety of different engineering subjects entail. This was a course for year 12 students interested in studying a form of engineering at university and it has truly given me amazing insight into the different types of engineering out there and technical equipment which I never even knew existed.
When I first arrived at the campus it was much bigger than I expected and the sporting facilities available was breathtaking. I was taken to my halls of residence and I thought my room was really nice. It had an ensuite bathroom, the desks were very spacious and there was a large amount of storage space (essential for any student, let alone a female one!) - I could imagine myself really enjoying being a student there.
I quickly made friends and I was given my timetable which consisted of 4 different engineering experiences of my choice - manufacturing, chemical, aeronautical & automotive and materials - each with a duration of 2 hours to really give a good idea of what they are all about.
First up was manufacturing engineering which is all about dealing with the machines and facilities which turn raw materials into final products. It was really interesting to see the tech workshops and the coursework which some of the students were making progress on. The machines looked much like the machines which I use in my school for my design and technology subject. It was interesting to see how those workshop lessons in school can translate to working in real life manufacturing. We also were allowed to look around the additive manufacturing and 3D printer section of the building. This is where machines melt plastic resins and are layered up to form a complex design which would be near impossible to make using other manufacturing processes. Designs such as human skulls had been made in 24 hours which would take so much longer if made by hand using manual labour, not to mention the computer printing can be made to such a high quality which would be hard to achieve by hand.
Next was my favourite engineering experience - chemical engineering. I had always thought this might be a field of interest for me and after my trip to Loughborough, my ideas have been confirmed. We went around in groups in the lab, having a chance to talk to many different chemical engineering students who also attend loughborough university. This was really helpful as I could ask all my important questions and we could get to grips with what this course is really like. They all loved it and explained that chemical engineering is actually a lot less chemistry than you would expect - hardly any in fact. Some explained it by saying that a client would give you a sample of a product in a test tube and your job as a chemical engineer would be to design a way of manufacturing that product in a large-scale way, taking into account all the cost/safety/environmental aspects. They say that the course enhances your teamwork dramatically and enables you to problem-solve in a practical way - all of which are strong employability skills. We got to see many different experiments which we will be able to perfom during our time at university and some of the equipment was so incredible.
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| Large-scale seperating funnel |
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| A greener way of producing energy |
Chemical engineers need to be able to know about what chemicals will react with what to ensure they do not design a method of production which will produce a large amount of by-product but will instead have good atom economy/yield. The students also told us how pratical and hands on the course is; especially the year in industry which will give me true insight into how what I am learning can be applied to the real world. Chemical engineering combines your scientific knowledge with engineering but lets you apply it to real-life industry without just learning theory. I found this really interesting and I am now strongly considering studying this option at university.
After our first two experiences, it was time for the evening entertainment. Loughborough University has won the title of 'best student experience' voted by the students from loughborough for 6 years in a row and I can now see exactly why! We were taken to the student's union building where there are 3 different bars/clubs and a large stage with lots of seating. There was so much to do there and it looked like so much fun. We were taken to the seating and played a video clip of the student life at loughborough. There are over 100 extra-curricular activities to get involved with and a strong sense of community around the campus! The students union also offers many different volunteering and fundraising opportunites to raise money for charity and contribute to beating the remarkable record of £1,100,000 that the Loughborough Rag managed to raise in 2010-11.
The third experience I had was aeronautical/automotive engineering. I didn't really know what this was about before I attended it. It involves using physics and maths to ensure that planes and/or cars are engineered to the most effective way possible. By using wind and smoke tunnels they can use prototypes to see how the air would hit the vehicles and see if they can get the maximum streamline possible. For example, the 1960's cars had a small angle between their bonnet and their windscreen which when demonstrated with the smoke tunnel we saw that this left large gaps of circulating air between them which would provide more drag and reduce their fuel efficiency. Nowadays, cars are becoming more and more flat and the angles from the windscreen and the bonnet are much larger - reducing drag on the car and allowing faster speeds with less fuel consumption. We also got to experiment with CFD -computational fluid dynamics - which is computer software for seeing how air/smoke will interact when it hits the surfaces of the different vehicles/componants. This was so cool and very complex... so much more difficult than the CAD software I use in tech!
My last one was the materials engineering experience. The lecturer for the first part of this was really inspirational. He was very enthusiastic and was able to get his ideas across really well. I learnt that materials engineering is looking at what materials are/their properties, why they have those properties and how they can be used/chosen for different uses. He told us about an interesting property of polymer materials which is their state at different temperatures. I.e. in low temperatures they are in a 'glassy' state and in high temperatures they are in their 'rubbery' state but somewhere inbetween is their transition temperature where they change state. He did a spectacular experiment where he put a rubber duck (obviously in it's rubber state!) into a pot of liquid nitrogen (below -200 degrees celcius) and when he removed it, it had turned into a brittle glass-like object and within 5 seconds it exploded and shatters of duck flew everywhere! Luckily he had the protective shield up or else everyone in the front row would have been hit with flying duck shards! Next we progressed through the labs and saw many equipment which I have learnt about in physics and chemistry such as young's modulus, mass spectrometry and a laser beam for diffraction of light off materials. It was really interesting to see these and know that I knew the theory behind them, showing how what we learn in school can be translated and used in real-life by engineers everyday. Finally, we saw a large injection moulding machine which I loved because I have learnt about it in design and technology but seeing it in person makes me understand it all so much more! They feed polymers into the screw which passes them through a heater which then pushes them through a mould and cools the product down for 20 seconds before removing it. This is what plastic bottles and their lids are made from. It shocked me to learn that 70 plastic bottle lids are produced every 3 seconds by injection moulding machines and yet this is not nearly enough lids for fizzy drinks alone! There needs to be at least 13 injection moulding machines producing this amount of lids every 3 seconds for a year to produce enough bottle lids for
just fizzy drinks. Let alone water bottle lids, cleaning product lids and medication lids and these are just the lids! Plus, each mould costs around £5,000 to make, expressing the strong pressure on the engineers to ensure the mould designs are absolutely correct and there will be no deformations on the final product.
I found my time at Loughborough University throroughly enjoying and very informative. Loughborough has won so many awards and achievements including being in the top 20 in all the UK league tables but especially for obtaining 11th out of 120 in the Guardian University Guide 2013. The spectacular equipment I had been lucky enough to see during my visit were all around £500,000 and I saw at least 10 of these in just 4 engineering departments! I now see why it is such a successful university and I am definately considering studying at Loughborough. Studying engineering at Loughborough would be an amazing opportunity for me - especially as their engineering facilites are rated so highly and 1/3 of all undergraduates are studying engineering. I am now especially looking forward to the summer open day so that I can show my parents why I loved my time there so much!
