FIELD AND LABORATORY WORK IN CIVIL ENGINEERING.
The outfit of Field Instruments contains compasses, transits, and levels
of various approved makes; a solar transit, furnished also with stadia wires
and gradienter for tachymetric work; hand-levels and clinometers for field
topography; plane tables; a sextant; together with an adequate supply of
leveling rods, telemeter rods, signal poles, chains, tapes, pins, and so on.
For hydraulic surveys a hook gauge and a current meter are provided. All
students are instructed in the theory and adjustments of the field instruments
and in their practical use in the field. They are also required to make
up their field-books in standard forms; to reduce their surveys and execute
all the necessary profiles, plans, and maps; and to determine lengths, areas,
and volumes both from the maps and from the original notes. Polar planimeters
are provided for facilitating such estimates and a pantograph for
making reduced copies of finished drawings.
The apparatus for tests of Non-bituminous Road Materials includes a
two-cylinder Deval abrasion machine, a ball mill, a moulding press for
briquettes of rock dust, a Page impact cementation tester, a Page impact
toughness tester, a rock crusher and a Purdue brick rattler. This outfit
the University owes to the generous aid of Dr. Logan Waller Page. In
addition, the Department has acquired a 40,000-pound compression tester,
a diamond core drill, a diamond rock saw, a grinding lap, a Westphal balance,
specific gravity apparatus, and a complete set of sieves. Useful
researches in the road-building rocks and gravels of Virginia, as well as
the standard tests, are conducted each year by the class in Civil Engineering.
The apparatus for tests of Bituminous Road Materials includes the
New York Testing Laboratory penetrometer, the Kirschbaum ductility
machine, the Engler viscosimeter, the asphalt viscosimeter, the New York
Testing Laboratory extractor, the New York State Board of Health oil
tester, Hubbard pyknometers, asphalt flow plates, gas and electric hot
plates, and all the accessory apparatus needed for research on bituminous
road-binders.
In recognition of the growing interest in Good Roads in Virginia
and the immense social and economic importance of the construction of
such roads in all parts of the commonwealth, the Faculty of the Department
of Engineering has rearranged the courses of instruction in this topic
and brought them together into the Spring Term, so as to form a Special
Course in Highway Engineering for the benefit of young men from Virginia,
who wish to go into public highway work. To such Virginians, if
adequately prepared and recommended, free scholarships will be given.
Application should be made to the Dean, accompanied by recommendations
from the State Highway Commissioner or from the Board of Supervisors
of the applicant's county.
