Battery Deaths & Easter

Well we're now on Easter Holiday until the 12th April.  Then we go back and stay at Warsash until August 9th when the college term ends and we go away to sea.

Apart from our usual Maths, we've been in workshop doing an 8 day fault finding course in electrical circuits.    Interestingly, we were told that even a small battery can potentially kill you.  Your normal resistance as a human is about 300 Ohms.  If you are particularly tired, or have had a big night on the drink etc, then your resistance can be much lower, and this is when it's possible to be hurt by so small a voltage/current.  I've certainly never heard of it myself, and am yet to find a willing test subject.

The first two days of the course were very basic, with us just proving ohm's and kirchoff's laws.  For those of us that didn't know, we were also taught how to use a multimeter properly.  We weren't allowed to use the "big boy" expensive multimeters until we'd proved this.  The next two days we spent actually studying control circuits and how to fault find in them.  (SEE PHOTO FOR WHAT WE'VE BEEN FAULT FINDING ON).  Control circuits are in lots of pieces of machinery.  An example would be where you have a green "on" switch and a red "off" switch (you can have more than one red switch).  You press the green switch to power up the circuit and it remains powered until someone hits one of the red "off" switches - often safety circuits in production lines or workshops.  Oh, and we're not allowed to say "on" or "off" now when referring to switches etc.  "On" is "made" or "closed", and "off" is "broken" or "open".  Also we're not allowed to say "bulbs".  They are "lamps".  I'm sure you'll catch me out next time you speak to me.

So, for now I've just got the Maths exam to look forward to, and the beginning of Engineering Drawing and Marine Legislation, which both begin when we're back.  Once we've had the Maths exam we will stop doing any Maths, until we come back from our first sea tour.