LABORATORY WORK IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING.
The Scott Laboratory of Electrical Engineering.—This laboratory was
initially equipped and endowed by Mrs. Frances Branch Scott, of Richmond,
Va., as a memorial to her late son, an alumnus of this university. During
the past year, 1910, the equipment has been substantially increased
through the generosity of the Hon. Charles M. Crane, of Chicago, Ill., a
friend of the university.
In addition to full sets of electric meters with the appliances for
testing and calibrating them, galvanometers of the best modern types,
standard cells and resistances, standard condensers, and other pieces of
apparatus for minor tests, it contains numerous pieces of the very best
construction. Such are the Wolff Potentiometer, the Siemens and Halske
Thomson Double Bridge, the Koepsel Permeameter, the Duddell Double
Projection Oscillograph, the Station Photometer with Lummer-Brodhun
screen, the Carey-Foster Bridge and others.
For the work in machine testing there are a number of direct current
generators and motors, series, shunt and compound, an interpole motor, a
double current generator, a two phase alternator, a General Electric experimental
test set for alternating current comprising a generator furnishing
single, two, three, six or twelve phase current and in addition offering
three types of induction motors with all necessary starting and controlling
devices, a single phase repulsion motor, a two phase induction motor, two
three phase induction motors, several pairs of constant voltage transformers,
a constant current transformer, a frequency meter, power factor indicator,
synchronism indicator, ground detector and the auxiliary apparatus used
in testing these machines.
The laboratory is being rapidly arranged with a system of universal
plug and receptacle connections to facilitate the setting up of all experimental
combinations.
The laboratory work is carried on in squads or groups of two or
three students and the work is so arranged that each student will become
familiar with all the details and connections of any particular test. A
most important feature of the laboratory instruction is the required
preparation of a preliminary report on each experiment before the actual
test is carried out. These preliminary reports are written up in the
classroom at assigned hours and consist of a complete résumé of the test
under discussion. The object, the theory, the scheme of connections necessary,
the choice of measuring instruments and all auxiliary devices needful
for the proper performance of the experiment are here worked out and
this preliminary report is handed in for correction or approval. After
approval the test is assigned for a definite laboratory hour and the work
is then carried through. A final report is then handed in consisting of the
preliminary and the additional data in tabulated and in graphical form.
Such a final report comprises a complete text on any given experiment
and will prove of great value in later work in commercial fields.
It is recognized that the outlined method for laboratory work is of
the greatest benefit to the student inasmuch as it requires a thorough
understanding of any given test, and at the same time inculcates habits
of self-reliance and a spirit of originality which cannot prove to be other
than beneficial in the later work when the engineer must rely upon his
own ingenuity to a great extent.
