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And what about the crew? No, we couldn't
convince Ty Pennington ("Extreme Makeover: Home Edition") or
Paige Davis ("Trading Spaces") to join us for this historic
makeover. Our crew, led by Dr.
Michael Vicic, includes:
- space & curriculum consultants: Profs. Costas
Giapis, Anand
Asthagiri, Mark
Davis
- construction management: Greg Norden
- building management: Patty Hess
- general contractor: R.M. Lane
- many subcontractors
You'll see many new faces working in Room 122 over the
next few months.
If you're tuning in for the first time, here's a
quick synopsis of what's happened so far. The team started
its work in March 2004 and generated a general concept for the
lab--open space, large working areas, versatile lab
configurations, plentiful utilities and top-of-the-line
equipment. During April and May, the team reduced this concept
to an initial design, allowing the demo crew to start its work
in June. Then the team refined the design in June and July and
chose the contractor in August. The contractor started work on
Aug 11, 2004.
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When construction ends at the end of the year, you
won't recognize the lab space. First of all, Room 122 will
be one large room again. All the interior walls have already
been removed, leaving 950 square feet of wide-open space.
Next, all low-hanging ducts are being raised, making all
permanent fixtures higher than eight feet from the floor. The
room will be lined with deep lab benches on the East wall, two
hoods and a lab bench on the West wall, and a narrow working
counter on the South wall. Four large islands will be located
in the middle of the room. And a dominant feature of the new
lab will be the 6-ft long x 4-ft high glass window in the
hallway.
Despite the new digs, the objective of the
Undergraduate Laboratory remains the same—use hands-on
experiments to reinforce essential concepts in kinetics,
control theory, thermodynamics and transport phenomena.
What about the actual experiments for ChE126a?
Some of your favorites will be modernized--you won’t even
recognize the QCM experiment. Other new experiments are
currently being developed. As in the past, students will work
in small groups and rotate through three experiments during
the term.
...and now back to your regularly-scheduled
programming. |
