Day 13: What’s this Thingy For?

A stalled train blocked my way to class, adding power to wise words of Milli Vannilli that no matter where you are, you can “Blame it on the Train.” We started the day with a quiz. And after reviewing the quiz we went on to discuss more electrical safety. They showed a before and later picture of a guy who got a burn to the hand. There was a charred and bruised thumb and a small half inch slit a few inches under the hand, they said that was an exit wound. They flipped the slide and showed the later picture of the same arm now split wide open from wrist to elbow from the swelling caused by the electrocution, the instructors said the electricity cooked him from the inside out. We used this period to covered the levels of protective equipment, barriers, and distances that one must maintain when approaching different levels of voltage.

After this we were introduced to the multimeter. We had seen safety videos from multimeter manufacturer’s but hadn’t worked with the meters themselves. One of the things I found surprising was that I took an electrical engineering course at the New York City College of Technology and they didn’t teach us as much about multimeters as this class did. They just told us to buy one and bring it to class. In the Wind Tech School they taught us what everything you see on a multimeter means. They told us about the category ratings on the multimeter, a indication of the level of voltage one can work with when given that equipment. We learned what all the little symbols on the back of the mulitmeter meant. They are the stamps of independent testers and warnings, many of these multimeters are not disposable and must be treated as electrical waste. I was happy to be learning all of this, but it just made it all the more disappointing how at City Tech, the college I paid for out of my own pocket, a school that was supposed to teach me electrical engineering just assumed you would be able to use one of these things out of the package.

We took a few quizzes. I always do well on these because they are open book. If I’m not positive on something, I look it up. The coming quizzes were particularly simple because it was how to use certain instruments, most of which only have a few uses. The rest of the day we went over lots of electrical equipment including meggers, voltage pens, infrared thermometer, phase rotation meters, and the handling of compressed gasses. After all that it was time to go home.