GPA 3.0 just to graduate from masters sounds impossibly hard?

Is it true that he didn't learn to tie his shoes for a long time? Or is that just a legend?

 

I found that out in a big way. I got through stage one of the exams with allegedly good marks for UOL. Apparently, only 18 percent do pass stage one in the first sitting. I did it, but I was very stretched because I was working as well. I did not continue because the commitment to sitting for three exams at one sitting was simply too much with holding down a full time job and meeting family commitments as well.

The process of relying upon exams for all the assessment is certainly fair but brutal. I respect the UK system. The Australian system mirrors it in many respects. Overall though, I would have to say that the US subjects I have undertaken have been an enjoyable and useful educational experience. The feedback on the way may be the essential difference between the two.

A person, who is midcareer with family, does not necessarily cope as well with the blunt, isolated approach of UOL to obtain educational goals. These goals can be achieved with the flexibility and the support of the US system more readily. A young, single person is in a different position.

The most important thing for people doing distance learning or, even perhaps any educational experience is to take on studies that fit your life. Pursuit of a degree that eclipses family or work commitments may be destructive.The US system fitted best for me. Admittedly my interest in law waned and my BS is from Excelsior College (inclusive of UOL transcript), but I think this college has it the right approach for students in my circumstances.

 

I can see why! Mere mortals like myself would be happy with scraping through one master degree.

 

Here is the guy who essentially invented the Axial Flux deign...well some egghead in a university probably invented the axial flux concept, however this guy (Hugh Piggott) began to hammer out the details behind homebrew wind generators. You can easily take his plans and modify them to suit your needs, once you understand the reationships between blade swept area, generator size, wiring resistance etc etc. Hugh Piggott's home page He is very well respected within the home brew wind industry...no razzle dazzle hype from this guy.

You dont directly power anything in you home with them, in other words, the power coming from a wind generator can not be hooked up to an appilance in your home....the power coming from a wind generator is "wild" power. It works like this: as the wind picks up in speed, the power output will increase too as the wind slows the power also slows...so the electrical current is always up and down the scale...like a yo-yo.
So you have two ways to solve this problem so that you can use the power.
1. is the expensive route, which many people use who live off grid. They simply push this varying wild power into a battery bank and use an inverter ( cheap or expensive choices here) to convert it back over to usable ac cuurent, such as 110 volts or 22 volts. However going this route, you can start off slow and add batteries as needed...most folks use those 6volt golf cart batteries for this purpose,...they have good storage capacity and can withstand a better discharge rate if you are into abusing your battery bank.

So from the generator, the power comes off as "WILD" AC power, it goes though a rectifier (you can build for yourself for about 30-40 bucks), the rectifier convertes it into DC power for battery charging. Then from the battery bank, you convert it back to usable AC power with an inverter.... essentially what the battery bank and the rectifier does is to " clamp" the incoming wild power and stores it for later use.

2. Or you can get a grid Tie inverter...SMA makes them, they can cost about 3-4 thousand bucks, however you do awaya with the batteries, the gridtie inverter has a bunch of whiz kid electronics inside which is programmed to constantly track the incoming wild AC power and converts it back over to usable house current. So you dont use the rectifiero in this setup. Thus you grid tie this and either you make enough energy to cut your power bill down or eliminate it all together...but to eleminate it all together, you would have to be very realistic here; cutting down on your consumtion, making your home very energy efficent and build a wind generator with a blade swept area of about 17-25 feet, which would probably give you on average 4-7KW on a good wind site.

So if you build you own generator from the start you will need to know how are you going to use the power...will it be grid tied or battery bank charging?
You need to decide this before you wind the stator with the magnet wire, because different gage wire can handle different voltages and amps. Its really not hard to do, to make your own stator..in an afternoon you can build one. Esstially each coil within the stator needs an equaly amount of turns of wire for a particular gage of wire to work properly.As you double the number of turns you double the voltage...thus you can make a generator for 12, 24 or 48 volt battery bank charging or you can make a scorching hot 440 volt grid tie stator for you wind generator. Here is a stator for a 17 footer I'm currently building...its 22 inches in diameter, just before casting it in polyester resin: