I can't believe it's been more than a year since I last sent an RSGC email! It feels like just last week I was handing in ER's at 11:59pm. I apologize for losing touch for so long, things have been quite hectic for me over the past 6 months. I've settled in well here at Guelph and am managing to pass all my courses while still having a good time and enjoying university life. Right now I'm studying for an Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism test which centres around capacitors, resistors and basic circuits :). I can't help but feel sorry for those who didn't have the opportunity to take your courses in high school and are now struggling with the material I had the chance to learn in grade 10.
I was hoping I'd have a few working projects to show you by the time I sent you this email but there's been some setbacks. I continued to work on the two-stage coil gun but could not for the life of me get the second stage to fire at the correct time. Instead I started to play around with more powerful single-stage coils and have worked my way up to a 22 capacitor 900V 7500μF bank running through 2mm thick copper wire with a custom charger (I invested in a pair of 3000V rated safety gloves!). I burnt through a dozen MOSFETs before I realized the only way to reliably trigger the discharge is to drop a large copper wedge between two plates. It's capable of 3000J and the sound it makes is really something else. I'm also working on a can crusher that uses a copper winding surrounding the can and two charged plates at either end to generate a magnetic field with a centroid inside the can. I'll send you a video of it working once I locate a camera.
I'm also currently working on a resumé for a few summer engineering job opportunities that have opened up, and it would be a big help if I could name you as a reference. Please let me know if that's ok with you.
I hope everything's going well in the engineering department at RSGC, and I'll stop by to chat and check out what the next generation of engineers are up to as soon as possible. I might try to coordinate something with Jack so we could stop by at the same time.
I can't believe it's been more than a year since I last sent an RSGC email! It feels like just last week I was handing in ER's at 11:59pm. I apologize for losing touch for so long, things have been quite hectic for me over the past 6 months. I've settled in well here at Guelph and am managing to pass all my courses while still having a good time and enjoying university life. Right now I'm studying for an Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism test which centres around capacitors, resistors and basic circuits :). I can't help but feel sorry for those who didn't have the opportunity to take your courses in high school and are now struggling with the material I had the chance to learn in grade 10.