As I went to pick up the mail today, I couldn’t figure out why my mailbox key would not fit into the mailbox. It was all confusing to me, so I’m standing there in front of my mailbox putting my key into every mailbox, because I think my mailbox must have changed. So to no avail, none of the mailboxes open.
So I go to class, and then i come back 3 hours later from class, and go to the mailbox again. I don’t know why it would change, but I was thinking in my head, maybe there was some heat expansion of the mailbox key. (Design information going through my head). But it didn’t work, so I went to ask the freshman Brian if there was a new key for the mailbox, and he said he didn’t know anything about it. So we went out to the mailbox, and tried putting our key into the mailbox, but it still wouldn’t work. Then after 5 minutes we gave up.
Then 2 hours later, my roommate Marc comes in and I ask him if we got a new mailbox key. And he said he didn’t know anything about it. So he goes and checks it out himself. Then he comes back and says “we have to go get a new key from the postoffice because they had put up new locks on our mailboxes. And I asked him how to found that out, and he said it was written on the bullentin board that was hanging near the mailboxes. Hmmm, if I had seen the bulletin board earlier all my intrigued would not hae gotten so high. And good thing I didn’t try punching my mailbox to get it to open.
What I thought was really interesting in lab was how my professor was teaching us how to design a Shaft Coupling. He gave us the paper, and it had information on there, and told us what we were suppose to do. So he tells us to just spend 10 minutes thinking about the problem and how to solve it. So we sit there thinking, and I’m working with a lab partner, and when we look at the paper, we see parts that have no dimensions on it. So we have all these questions, then the professor comes back and starts to go over the whole problem with us. Then he starts telling us about why we have these sets of standards.
There is a main reason that ASME sets standards for width and strength of objects. First, it’s mostly for easy of mind of the consumers. If I did an analysis on a beam that was bending under pressure, I would usually find that the beam will take the load. But it is just the idea that the beam has a big bend in it that makes people nervous about it. So that is why they set standards, so it mades everything look safe.
I learned that as an engineer, I should build for solidity then strength.
