Air & Space Center and First Lecture
Georg Schmidt - March 28, 2016
Different as mentioned in the song „I don’t like Mondays“ from The Boomtown Rats we started balanced and regained in the new week – more or less with little wounds caused by the wet and cold walk at the beach. On this cloudy morning we went to an empty room of the Strome Hall of the ODU to discuss the details for the next days.
On the way we could look around the hall. The room for stock exchange stuff was very impressive – a number of huge screens on the wall, modern workspaces with two large monitors, special keyboards and nice chairs – for the students!
On wet roads we drove into the north through the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel at noon. The cloud ceiling disappeared and sun revealed already. Although we drove through such tunnels several times, nobody mentioned the reason for these tunnels before.
Norfolk residents the largest naval station ot the US – the Naval Station Norfolk. It is claimed, that it’s the largest naval station of the world. In this way the region Norfolk represents a rewarding target. To ensure vessels can leave the harbor and the bay, the tunnels were built because collapsing bridges would jam the ocean route. Some tunnels have raised islands for the entries and exits.
Our next stop was the “County Grill & Smokehouse” in the near of the Herberts Creek. There were dished up North American delicacies, again. The speciality of this place was the housemade BBQ sauces and the very large onion rings. The burgers were good as well.
After the lunch we visited the Virginia Air & Space Center. Through the traffic jam we came later both to the lunch and the VASC. So we had to hurry through the exhibition. Nevertheless we got one’s money’s worth. There were a lot of planes “hovering” in the hall, the Apollo-12 command module, rocks from the Moon and the Mars, and some interactive exhibits. Due to lack of time we managed to take a group photo and then we had to continue our today’s journey.
Now our group divided into two parts, each going to a lecture. The electrical engineers went to Dr. Popescu’s lecture “Communication Systems”. The topic was “effect of noise on analog communication systems”, the sixth chapter of his lecture.
What got my attention instantly: Electrical Engineering isn’t the most popular subject, even in the US. There were only 6 students attending this lecture. The students weren’t using any electrical device, not even laptops. Usually in lectures you can see opened laptops everywhere.
Dr. Popescu wrote down all the information as he had it at his fingertips. Some of the shown information we knew already, but this lecture expands on, more as we handled. It would be nice to know if the lectures on a German University are the same or different. At the University of Applied Sciences we discussed more the digital modulations instead of analog modulations, because they have a few advantages and are used and will be used more frequent in the future.
After the lectures we met Dr. Popescu to talk about the lectures, subjects and the university in general.
Time flies! The dusk was breaking. Unified with the other ones we travelled to Ocean View to walk on the beach. Some of us went into the water. Afterwards we went to the pier, where some shrimp fishermen caught some crabs. The evening was topped off with some American fastfood, again.
This was the first day of the new week and for a Monday it was better than expected.
By Georg Schmidt
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