Malta Exchange

Wednesday 23rd February -

I was up by 6.40am and on the bus at 7.30am. Arrived nice and early for my Mechatronics lecture but by 8.10am no one else had turned up. It turned out that the class had been moved to Friday at 8am (joy!). Spent some time in a computer lab catching up on websites. 10am class, Introduction to Heat Transfer, was good and after that I met up with my design group and we spent 3 hours working on the project. This included a demonstration of a firework. It was black powder fuel, which is normally only for the initial propulsion of catherine wheels and rope-models (models which travel along metal wires). The firework was placed between two rocks and secured in place before igniting. Not much to say except it made a lot of smoke. For dinner Gavin made red snapper fish dish with peppers and lemon served with oatmeal potatos. While we were having our dinner the three nations drinking competition started with Scotland, Ireland and France taking part. Obviously Scotland won with the French dropping out early on. The Irish team, composed of an Irishman, a Northern Irishman and a Canadian (to make up the numbers), made a valient effort and stayed in until the bitter end.

One of my design team is the president of UESA, the University Engineering Student Association, and this is his office which we use for our design project meetings (dispite there only being 3 chairs).

The propulsion firework we tested.

And another view showing the fuse and the clay which doubles as the nozzle.

On the right the "Irish team", the three sitting behind the table are the Scottish team and the one remaining French competitor on the far left.