Friday, December 22, 2006
3 days to Christmas
Watching TV now, there is this thai horror flick showing later on the tv. will watch to see if it's watchable, else will have my beauty sleep soon. The weekend is coming, so fast, week by week, this school holiday is too fully packed with fyp. Though it's tiring for my partner and me, but actually I do enjoy the process pretty much , and also the interaction with other fyp mates. This project had been taken by males throughout the past 5 years. Well, AY and I decided to break the history record and take up this challenge *haa trying to encourage myself*. Imagine you have to carry bins of asphalt and sacks of aggregates each weighing 30+ kg. Not only that, it comes with manual compaction *yes, i mean MANUAL* of the asphalt slab using a proctor hammer that weighs 10kg. Not once, but 40 times at one go by each of us. Total 80 times for one cycle. About 6 cycles. So each of us actually hammered 240 times! What the hell! This figure really shockes me right now! What's next? the asphalt slab (80+ kg) has to be lifted and placed into the machine where testing is carried out. Fork lifter can't entirely do the job for us, we need to push the sample that is hanging on the forks until it fits nicely into the machine. Of course, with our limited strength, we can't do much but to seek help from the guys present in the lab. Normally, we are able to grab CS, JH, HS and DL. Really thanks to these guys. If not for them, I should already be dying and dreads fyp.Did one testing today. However, our sample failed even before we started to conduct the test. The slab was hanging in the air for a too long period, about 45 mins. We couldn't get it fit into the machine. The guys had been trying real hard. I was using my mighty strength to manually turn the fork lift handle to lift the slab up, as well as to release it down repeatedly until the guys managed to fit that stupid thing in. Damn it, we did it by force in the end. CS and JH stamped it with their feet. It was a funny sight, should have taken pictures of those. Will try next time, haha. OK, though finally get it done, that thing failed us, the results was far worse than one without reinforcement. The slab was already bending in a wide U-shape before it even decided to succumb to us. Great! Not satisfied with the outcome, it finally decided to get back to us by giving us a failed one. fine fine fine, nothing to say. We were partly to blame as well, too anxious to carry out the test that we did not allow a full 24 hours for the asphalt slab to cure first. * Hope the RS student would not come across this blog*.
Had a small chat with CS and DL at the back of the lab today and during the car ride in Andy's car this evening...
Bloody hell, think my brain is failing me right now, my eyes too.. can't carry on. Have to tuck into my cosy bed very soon after this. Have to go back lab to do compaction tomorrow in the morning so that test can be carried out after the long weekend. Shall continue again soon. Selamat Malam!
wQ|n9y at 11:12 PM
