Posted in February 2014

Hello there!

After a tiresome 14 hour bus ride, we were finally at the faculty EWI again. Last week was one of the most awesome experiences in a long time. Learning how to (snow)board is really… awesome.

It is even better when you really get the hang of it, without any lessons! But before I continue with this, let us go back to the previous post.
Because I wanted to make a comment on the video I posted. First of all, the whole movie is a moving piece of art. The colors, composition and sound in every scene is sublime.

Second, as you can see, there is a nice contrast between those who make the product and the ones that buy it. The makers make sure that nothing is spilled, everything is clean and well organised.
While on the other hand, those who buy everything, seem chaotic, greedy and inefficiënt. And in the end, they need a quick fix to repair their own created problems.

Thus far my comment on Samsara, now on to more fun (read: mathematical) subjects!

To start off, my exam of the course Stochastic Processes. It has been more than a week since I made it and I am still not sure about it.
Sometimes I reason in a way that I think I passed it, but knowing that the teacher is quite strict in notation/precision I sometimes doubt my previous statement…
Enfin, I can’t change anything now so we will see in a week or two.

The second mathematical topic is about my intern at TNO that I started today!

I woke up around 7:45 am, slept really bad, dreamt weird and felt feverish. After a shower and some breakfast it went a bit better, but I still couldn’t breath through by nose and my eyes had a hard time staying open.
Probably some side effects from last week (boarding, partying, cold outside, warm inside, long nights, long days..)

Jumped on my bike, drove to TNO, walked in the building by 9:00 am… right on time.
The following hours were filled with meeting new people, shaking hands and some chit-chat. After the lunch I could finally ‘start’ with my project.

It still is a little bit vague what my goal will be.. but it revolves around the Lattice Boltzman Method. For a quick example, check out this site

 http://wiki.palabos.org/numerics:matlab_samples

The idea behind this (semi-)resent method is that you don’t look at a bunch of control volumes, rather you look at the particles that bounce around. Together with some assumptions on the movements of theses particles, a neat method follows from this.
This is called the lattice boltzman method and can be used to solve dynamic fluid problems.

Another model that can be used to calculate the movement of fluids, are the Navier-Stokes equations. This model has been around for several more years and there already exist a lot of solvers for this problem.
But, this lattice boltzman method might be ‘better’ in certain situation. The situation I will be in, is the environment of a greenhouse.
It is desireable to have a certain percentage of airhumidity in these buildings, such that the plants can grow as fast as possible.
This model, combined with certain regulators inside the greenhouse, should be able to control the airhumidity. At this moment, the Navier-Stokes equations are still used.. but as I already said, this “new” method might be better in this situation.

In the comming weeks/months I will keep posting my progress and (hopefully) some results.

Now I promised to talk also talk about politics and my graduation project.. I will do the latter next time and the former is summarized in this video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=effb2JYiKXM[/youtube]

Bye!