Hey everyone, congratulations!! We all survived another year of university! Hopefully you all made it through your exams okay, and have almost decided on which specialisation is the best for you!
This is, unfortunately, my final blog post of the year 😢 so I thought I would just give a brief summary of what happened in the last few weeks…
1. 205 Chemical Process Project
This group project was introduced to us on the first day of the semester and was due on the very final day (fourteen weeks later). We were given a chemical process to analyse (I had the amazing Sugar Refining) and we constructed a 20 page report including the material/energy balances, a mechanical analysis on one of the components, material selections, plant safety, and economic impacts. The last two weeks of the lecture slots was each group presenting to the class for ten minutes on their findings, and it was actually really interesting hearing about all the different chemical processes that happen in New Zealand.
2. Heat Conduction Assignment
This was another group project – which involved using MATLAB to code/simulate the freezing of a meat slab, by using our knowledge on conduction and convection. This is the first year they introduced coding in chemmat, and I think it really got shot down in the SET evaluations 🥴 so there’s a chance this might not be returning again next year. It was relatively difficult doing group coding, but there were also tons of tutorials and help sessions available.
3. Lab reports
Over the year I wrote 6 lab reports, each usually an average of 3000 words. You only have 10 days after your lab session until this is due, so I strongly recommend starting it as early as possible and asking lots of questions during the lab, to avoid later confusion. These can be a real pain when there are tests and assignments due at the same time, but I also found lab sessions really useful in order to understand the concepts we learn in class, as you can actually see and experience it in real life.
4. Exams
There were three exams this year, and they were very spread out over a long three weeks. In my opinion, if you complete and understand all of the class examples and tutorial sheets throughout the year, you should be fine.
So that’s it! I hope you have all enjoyed hearing myself and the other bloggers talk about our experiences in second year engineering, and good luck in making your final specialisation decision! ❤️