MeasurementBlog

Do you understand Thermocouples?
http://www.youtube.com/user/ControlEngineeringTV
Control Engineering Editor Peter Welander demonstrates the concept and use of thermocouples, including one made from scrapbox components. (10 minutes). I think this is a lot cooler than the TV ads for Sprint mobile that Dan Hesse makes (in MHO). Way to go, Peter!

NPTEL, India’s National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning, has developed over the past two years an enormous group (Uploads=4361, as of 7 March 2010) of online, advanced leaning video lectures.

They are aimed to enhance the quality of engineering education in the country by developing curriculum based video and web courses. This is being carried out by seven IITs and IISc Bangalore as a collaborative project.

Each is about one hour and requires a basic understanding of the terms used, an ability to listen and understand the lecturer, almost always a noted Indian lecturer with a distinct accent (to Western ears), and a willingness to persist through some basic lecture techniques that can be as limited as a speaker facing the camera with minimum of visual aids (whiteboard, blackboard).

Here is a sample video, Lecture-3 on Discrete Time Signal and Systems (one of the top rated in the country) by Prof.T.K.Basu, Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, India.

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Born in 1792, the French mathematician and physicist Gustave Gaspard de Coriolis was the first to describe the force that history has named after him. This force is particularly noticeable in rotating systems.

The experiments and simulations shown in this film illustrate what it’s all about, courtesy of the YouTube video by the Endress & Hauser organization a flowmeter manufacturer, among other process measurement & control products.

One my major consistent interests in 30+ years of experience in Industry & Science has been education on measurement devices and their uses. Many engineers & scientists have limited resources in the area of measurement. Most are concerned with getting a process running and under control.

Now the Web and its many educational and training features there are some very useful tutorials on them in written, audio and visual forms. YouTube in particular, provides some great video learning aids.

Here’s one that I think is especially well done in the area of flow measurement: the Principle underlying Thermal Mass Flowmeters (there’s a brief commercial at the end, but it’s a far cry from other similar presentations available at this time).