Week2 Report

HAHA…Sure a lot of people waiting for this… Here we go…

I went to downtown city of Bochum by myself. Visited place of interest like: Deutsches Bergbau-museum (Germany miming museum), City hall, Propsteikirche St .Peter und Paul (the most ancient church of the city), zeiss Planetarium Bochum. Further more. I also traveled to other city (Dortmund) which next to Bochum. Visited the television tower, which is more than 150m in high. And all the transportation fee? Haha…It is all FREE. (I can travel around the Ruhr area with my university student card for free. Bus, subway, “Regional express” train)

Germany miming museum, which show you the miming history of Ruhr area (heavy industry area in Germany). This area is famous as its coal and steel production. I went down to more than 17m underground. People can feel how is the coal-miming environment looks like. There are so many machines inside the tunnel even during the age of steam power. What an Impressive place! No wonder Germany is famous as its heavy machines. Awesome!

Full view of Bochum city from the shaft of the museum. no high-rise..Everything seems to be so peaceful right here in Bochum.

City hall Planetarium

Oldest Church in Bochum

This is the television tower which located in Dortmund (another city of Ruhr area)

I have experience “life without computer” this week. The fuse which inside my electrical converter get blow. (It used to convert three pins to two pins to adapt German electrical socket.) Overload I think. I try to find a shop to buy a fuse. But you know what! In Germany, all the shops CLOSE in Sunday. Therefore, I was then being isolated from the world. You can’t imagine how tough it was. (Although it is only 7 hours) Until I find a solution. The old converter that I brought from Singapore, I use nothing but a dining knife! Cut its plastic ellipse form to round form. And It works! Finally, I got my power back!

Cooking heater uses to heat up the knife. The outer shape of the plug is round in Germany. (Not only the pin.) Haha…It proved nothing is impossible!

I went for a football match last weekend. It was my first time to watch a football match in a stadium (real LIVE). Player: Bochum city team against Bielefeld team. People have cup of beer with them during the match. I also got one.hah…Let’s cheer for Bochum! (The blue scarf representing the team we supported.) Bochum wins Bielefeld with two goal. Result is 2:0 (Drinking beer while watching football match is part of the German life or can say culture in that senses)

The cup you can return after the match. Then you can get one euro (2 SGD) back. (Hmm… good way of prevent littering. And environmental friendly)

Am I now in China? hah… No…This is a Chinese Garden which named “Qian Yuan”(潜园) located at the back of Ruhr-university. And this is the only Chinese Garden in Germany. I found it. Although it is small, but it has all the Chinese element inside which form a harmonic picture. Surprise….man…hah…

Ruhr-university's convention center. It is the first university in Ruhr area.

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OK…Now back to my project. This week is my teammate’s exam week. Therefore, everybody is preparing his or her exam. There is not much thing for me to do. I have an email from the MPPT companies. Some companies don’t provide MPPT anymore. And I do receive datasheet from drivetek( company name). And we have order one from them.

I went to EEW (company’s name which doing some modeling stuff), located 469 km away from Bochum. We drive to there by Car. Hah…There is not speed limit in highway after 8PM. We reached a speed of 200 KM/H. (the max speed for my friend’s car). Hah...(Highway is invention from Germany ).

So this is the CNC machine.CNC stand for Computer Numerical Control. this machine cost 800,000 euro. It is basically a machine which can move in three axis (direction). With a cutter attached to the motor, by inputting coordinate data to the machine which done by programer. It will then doing the job for us. This White color stuff is polystyrene, used to create the modeling of our new car.

But suddenly there is one big problem. Because there is a metal frame structure inside the polystyrene, and the cutter cut into the metal. And more worse it leads the cutter to break. It was broken into two parts. Luckily, not one get injured. We find out the problem is the metal structure itself. It is wrong in dimension. We need to figure out a way to solve it in university. Any way… We have to go back to Bochum. We canceled our hotel everything. (we planned to stay there for two days.)

Before we leave, we went to the north coast of Germany. It is a place called Kalifornien (not USA California, although they pronounce the same.) From there to the north will be other countries like Denmark or Norway. Enjoy the wind blow from the German sea. Have a nice weekend!

Some wind turbines alone the highway.

House powered by solar panel. Stand-alone? Grid-tie? I don't know. :)