“Let there be Spin!”I<\/p>\n
\u2019ll be going into my sixth week at university on Monday. That is mid-way through my first Semester. Those are some scary statistics. Put them into perspective: my brain has yet to process my being at university. It doesn\u2019t really have much time, does it?<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get my wrong \u2013 it\u2019s not because it doesn\u2019t feel like university. It\u2019s just that it\u2019s going too fast. Already, I\u2019ve handed in two pieces of coursework, been set yet another piece, had a \u2018C\u2019 programming test (that managed to remove any and all confidence I had in my programming abilities), and have been set a group project for Engineering Challenges:<\/p>\n
A motor.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s so difficult about making a motor, you ask? Getting it to spin. Really fast.<\/p>\n
So, there we sat, coiled wire, battery and magnet in place. We connected up the last bit and waited in anticipation. Four people, sitting around a kitchen table staring at the most basic circuit ever, willing it to move. Nothing happened. Apparently, thinking \u201cI do believe it will move\u201d only works in Peter Pan. Disheartened, we disassembled the piece of circuitry, each taking up a component and trying to magic it into working. A minor error, it was later revealed, was the most likely suspect for our failure. That corrected, we assumed our earlier positions, and waited. It seemed like an age between the connecting of the wire, the repositioning of the magnet and the movement. For it moved. The coil did not twitch, it was not moving because of a pair of unsteady hands; it moved of its own accord. In fact, it spun. The whirring of the motor put a smile to all our faces, cutting the tension that had built up; easing our minds. We weren\u2019t going to fail!<\/p>\n
A few minor adjustments, we decided, would be all that was needed for us to have the perfect motor. Or the fastest one, at any rate.<\/p>\n
Testing\u2019s not for another week. Many things can happen in a week. We hope an insanely fast motor is one of them. .<\/p>\n
Yes, I think university is coming along quite nicely. Don\u2019t you?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“Let there be Spin!”I \u2019ll be going into my sixth week at university on Monday. That is mid-way through my first Semester. Those are some scary statistics. Put them into perspective: my brain has yet to process my being at university. It doesn\u2019t really have much time, does it? Don\u2019t get my wrong \u2013 it\u2019s not because it doesn\u2019t feel …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":318,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33312,33311],"tags":[377,431072,428280,431070],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-living-in-southampton","category-southampton-university-life","tag-perspective","tag-programming-abilities","tag-semester","tag-spin","column","twocol"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3BSCk-ac","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/318"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1356,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions\/1356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/studentblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}