Oscar Heerkens Thijssen, Clemsson University, post4: Academics
Dear reader,
This is the last week before the finals. Academics so far have not been hard so far. I am take two mechanical courses and two electrical courses. During the semester there are a couple of midterms and usually you are expected to do homework. Both, homework and midterms, cover around 60% of the final grade. So by the time it is exam week you have a pretty good idea what your final grade is going to be like.
For one of my electrical engineering classes, power engineering, we went on a tour to a coal power plant in Charleston. We arrived the day before, after a five hour drive, and spent the night in one of the lodges of the utility company. Charleston is great for going out so we very much enjoyed ourselves. The day after we had a little hard time focusing during the presentations, as expected. However, the power plant itself was very impressive. There was a pile of coal worth $200 million laying if front of the plant and the sheer size of the boilers was overwhelming. In total it was one of the best trips I did.
Besides the courses I am working on a robotics project with a group of mechanical and computer engineering students. We are programming a robot that will assist humans in assembly tasks at the BMW manufacturing plant in Greenville, and potentially throughout the US. The robot is able to tell different car parts apart using its cameras, can grab the single part and place it on the right spot in the dashboard. Baxter, as the robot is called, is not yet fully functional but the trip to BMW to show our results is already planned.
During fall break our group was invited to a conference of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Two of us went there to present our project. The flight and hotel were paid for by the US Navy. Unfortunately I could not go since I had the New Orleans trip planned. When I comes to academics Clemson has a lot to offer. Especially the projects, named ‘creative inquiries’, are worth checking out.
Kind regards,
Oscar
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