Working of Nitrous Oxide boosters in a car!

Hi Guys,

A few days ago I was hearing podcast in my iPod about ‘How Nitrous oxide boosters work?’ released by ‘How stuff works’ website. I’ve seen Nitrous Oxide Boosters in few games and movies including Need for Speed (game), Dhoom, Fast and the Furious (movies). I have never thought about the technology inside that. I was thinking that Nitrous Oxide is a fuel and it has high combustion rate or something like sort of that. But the reality was much more amazing.

Nitrous Oxide cylinders inside a car

Basically there are two theories behind the boost.

1st Theory

Nitrous Oxide (N₂O) splits into Nitrogen and Oxygen at 300 degree Celsius. Therefore a ½ mole of oxygen is introduced. Air consist 21% oxygen and this addition makes it as 33%. This enrichment of oxygen provides more burning of fuel and hence higher power emission and higher speed.

2nd Theory

Nitrous Oxide has some other effect too. It provides a significant cooling to the intake air. Decrease in temperature increases the air’s density, which means more oxygen will be present in the intake air.

In both the theories, more oxygen is taken inside the cylinder and hence more burning takes place. This can be imagined with the candle experiment we studied long ago. Keep a burning candle inside a closed container. It burns until oxygen is present and then turns off. If there is more oxygen, it would burn for more time. Nitrous Oxide increases the amount of oxygen.

NOS system for a car

Disadvantage of Nitrous Oxide System

Nitrous oxide is very bulky and we need a lot of Nitrous Oxide for the engine. Normally the Nitrous Oxide is compressed and stored as a liquid. Still then, it occupies a large amount of space. Therefore a car can carry only a few minutes of Nitrous Oxide and the driver must use it carefully. It’s normally activated using a button (you must have seen it if you have seen race movies like Fast and the Furious).

Another disadvantage is that, due to large amount of release of Oxygen more pressure is applied and the engine’s cylinder may be damaged. Nitrous Oxide is not allowed legally by transport organizations. Even the major racing groups have banned usage of Nitrous oxide in their races.

Nitrous is mainly produced by Nitrous Oxide Systems (NOS) and hence is also known as NOS.

External Links

How Stuff Works: How does nitrous oxide help an engine perform better?

Nitrous- Wikipedia

Happy Reading!!!

P.S: The image used is the nitrous oxide boosters fitted in a Volvo concept car. Image credit belong to Volvo and Google

Things that crossed my way!

Hi Guys,

I’m quite busy since my V semester classes begun. This time, the classes are quite boring. In the past two weeks I gained lot of experience as I along with my friends went through some of the old streets of the city. I have never visited those streets before. We had been busy working for a mini project competition and it is quite sad that the project is on the verge of failure. Hoping that things get alright in the upcoming days.

Chess and me

Chess requires lot of logical thinking. My brother taught me to play chess when i was 7 or 8. We played a few times and I kept losing all those time. Then both of us became uninterested and we left playing. After that I’ve played chess very rarely with some of my friends. In the past few months, I started to play again with computer. There are 10 levels and I normally choose 1st or 2nd level. I lose some and win some, but all those things marginally. The magic occurred a few days before. I was playing in level 1 and this time I played with different tactics. To my surprise, I was on the upper side right from the start. I finished the game in just 10 minutes after losing just 2 coins. Here I present some of those screenshots.

 

The biggest comedy was that, I lost the next game which I played in level 2.

Salt- Movie

Yesterday evening I went to the movie Salt along with my friends. I was half minded about going to the movie, but as my friends compelled I went to the movie. It was not a very great movie. A few action sequences were good. Apart from that nothing was impressive.The movie was not very clear. The outline was good, but the screenplay made it clumsy. Angelina Jolie is a Russian and she is trained to collapse USA. She joins in CIA as a spy for the Russian rebel group and she is assigned to kill the Russian president visiting USA . Their next plan is to launch nuclear weapons on the Muslim countries and turn them against USA. For reasons unknown Angelina fights against the Russian group. Why she is against them is not explained properly. We came out of the theatre with lot of questions and none was satisfactory of seeing the movie.

White Umbrellas in my home

I woke up on Friday and found some small mushrooms in my garden. I took my camera and captured the mushrooms. The lighting was poor, but I thought, the mushrooms will wither by the time I cam back home in the evening. The pictures were not very brilliant. I publish the photos for your view.

That's it for now.

Happy Reading!!!

Numismatics!

Hi Guys,

For the past 5 years or so, I've been collecting coins. Numismatics is the hobby of collecting coins. For a long time I thought I was a numismatist (a person having numismatics as his hobby). I realised that I don't take any effort to collect coins and so numismatics is not my hobby. But, whenever I come across different type of coins, I add it to my collection. I've approximately 100 coins in my collection. Today I got a new 5 Rs coin and just then i thought of publishing some of the coins in my collection in my blog.

Here I publish the photos of my album as Picasa Web album slideshow.

If you have problems viewing the photos, use this link

Coin Collection!

Happy Viewing!!!

Rainy Days!

Hi Guys,

The weather has been pleasant here for the past few days. There was a heavy rain day before yesterday and a few drizzles before and after that. My mind started to travel back a few years. I’ve always enjoyed rain. My parents used to be so worried about my health and will be warning me to stay away from rain. But I have enjoyed a few circumstances when I have inadvertently drenched myself in rain. So I’ll be writing about those sweet memories in this post.

August 2003

I was studying 8th standard then. It was late august and we were having maths special class (it’s terrible to think that we had special classes even in our 8th standard). After the school, I was coming back to home along with my friend in cycle and it started to rain heavily. There was no cover nearby and hence we had no option but to continue riding. I was soaked completely when I was in home. That was the first time I was drenched in rain and hence I was very scared that I would get fever and the mental thought combined with my parent’s scolding created fever. I became so terrified of rain after this event.

July 2004

Nature had its own plans to take off my fear. This time the event occurred in Guruvayur, Kerala. I was there with my friends and it was a school tour. It was a ten minute walk from the temple to the place where the bus was parked. After visiting the temple I was returning to the bus along with a few of my friends. It started raining all of a sudden. There was no shelter nearby and hence we had to keep moving. This time I had no fear, as I knew my parents weren’t there to admonish me. The only fear I had was the fear of illness and soon I understood that I got fever the first time just because of my mental fear. So, I started to love rain. Though, the journey became damped because of the monsoon rains.

October 2007

A few years passed and I had no fears of rain, but I avoided getting into rain deliberately as it made the dresses waterlogged. It was October, the rainy season in Tamil Nadu (all of India gets rain in June-July by Southwest monsoon, whereas Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh receive rain in October-November by Northeast monsoon).

My brother had come home for one of his weekend holidays. It was a fortnight before Diwali and my mother was insisting him to get new dresses. So he started to the store one afternoon and as I was having a boring time in home, I accompanied him. It was sunny when we started, but as we were shopping it started to rain heavily. We finished the shopping and were waiting for the rain to abate. From inside the shop it seemed that the rain had stopped completely and so we stepped out. But it was still drizzling heavily.

My brother was too concerned about me and asked me to use the shopping bag as a protective cover over my head. He was also using one and I was too lazy to carry it and just kept it brushing my hair. The bag was black in color with some designs. When we were in the bus, I found that the bag was bleached at one particular spot (where it was brushing my hair). I was saying to my brother that the oil in my hair would have reacted with the bag and my brother said that I was thinking idiotically. Soon we found that the bag’s composition was of very poor quality. The color was sticking to our hands and dresses. I won’t forget this incident because of those sticking colors. The black color is still present in the shirt that I was wearing that day.

September 2009

I was in my second year classes and we were conducting a technical symposium in our college and I was the head of the technical committee. I was having very busy time between September 15 and September 25 as I had to download the papers and reply to the sender’s questions (I thought it was an easy job, but I realized the difficulty as I was receiving hundreds of mails). It was one of those days when it started raining massively when I was travelling in bus. I got down at the bus stop at 5.15 pm and went into a nearby shop 10 feet away for shelter, but within that time I was drenched completely. I was waiting for rain to subside, but it was 6.15 pm when the rain reduced to drizzling. Then I went to my home in the drizzling. I was soaking wet when I reached home. It was good that I reached home as early as possible, as I had more than 75 mails to be read on that particular day.

June 2010

This incident happened just a month ago. I was in Chennai for my brother’s engagement. It was June 6, the day before his engagement. My parents went to purchase things. Meanwhile I and my cousin brother were asked to get a reference note from one of my relative’s house. We started by 10 am from his home. When we started the climate was unstable and we didn’t car to take an umbrella. We got into a share auto and it started to rain heavily in 2 minutes. The journey itself was nasty as the crossing vehicles splashed water on us (particularly on my cousin brother who was sitting at the right corner).

We got down at a signal where we had to change directions. It took less than a minute to cross the road but we were already soaked to the skin. We got into another share auto and when we got down at the bus stop, we waited for the rain to end. It was 15 minutes before the rain subsided to drizzling. We were impatient and so we started to walk in the drizzling. We reached my relative’s home in five minutes and by the time we reached there the drizzling had stopped. Again nothing happened to both of us this time.

These are all the things I remember. All of them have been wonderful when thinking back. Rain is one beautiful thing that gives lot of freshness and energy to the soil and nature. I have also received some of the energy. Why don’t you try it out?

Happy Reading!!!

Not a Penny more, Not a Penny less - Review

Hi Guys,

I recently read the novel ‘Not a penny more, Not a Penny less’ written by Jeffrey Archer. This is the first time I’m reading a Jeffrey Archer novel and I was largely impressed.

The front cover

The story revolves around Harvey Metcalfe who is a king of shady deals. He makes a very clever plan and traps four people and steals away one million dollars from them. The four guys combine together and revenge Harvey. Their plan is simple: to knock Harvey for exactly one million dollars, not a penny more, not a penny less.

Harvey Metcalfe is not born rich and he is left on street as his father dies when he is 14. He joins a stock broking firm as a messenger. His job is to carry messages confidentially to the people. Harvey is very wily and learns everything about the stock market there. By doing so, he becomes a millionaire within 4 years. Next he takes over a friend’s company who wants to join navy and in the process robs the company. He becomes a multi millionaire and continues to rob innocent people.

Now he is over 60 and this time, he starts an oil company known as Prospecta Oil. He introduces it in the share market and he uses David Kesler, a Harvard graduate as his key. David is being told that Prospecta oil has found a strike (oil well in sea) and hence its share prices will go up when it is announced. David spreads the news to four innocent people Steven Bradley, an American professor at Oxford, Dr. Robin Oakley, a renowned Physician, Jean-Pierre Lamanns, who holds an art gallery and Lord James Brigsley. All four of them lose their life time savings in the process. They are heart broken when they come to know about the fraud.

Steven Bradley is very intelligent. He collects information about Harvey and groups everyone to revenge Harvey. Each one is to create a plan and they are to get back the money from Harvey without his knowledge. Everyone prepares a plan except James who tells that he will prepare at the last.

Harvey visits London every year to watch Wimbledon, see horse races and gamble in casinos. The 4 people plan to rob Harvey at different places. Jean-Pierre uses Harvey’s interest in arts and cons Harvey at his art gallery. Next is Robin’s turn. He uses his doctor mind to corner Harvey in an operation and get money for a surgery, which he never did. Next Steven uses his university’s graduation ceremony and gets donation for Oxford which is never going to reach Oxford.

James does a great job in all the three plans, with his acting skills. In the mean time, James also falls in love with Anne Summerton, a model. Now they have $250101.24 to collect and James still doesn’t have a plan. Anne makes James to meet his father and their marriage is fixed. The other three decide to attend the marriage in USA, which is Anne’s mother land. James says that he will say the full plan after the marriage and discloses a part.

From there on there are lot of twists and turns in the story. To know the climax, read the novel.

Jeffrey Archer

Footnote

This is Jeffrey Archer’s first novel. The book was released in 1976. When he had the story, no one was ready to publish. When it was finally published only 3000 copies were sold in hardback. When paperback was published 20000 copies were sold, as the word spread. After that the book has been a great success and it has been reprinted 57 times.

Happy Reading!!!

Follow me on Twitter

Hi guys,

I created my twitter account a few months, but I have not been tweeting frequently. Now, the addition of newer toolbar in my blog makes things simple. Hence, from now on you can find updates about me and my blog on twitter. My twitter id is

http://twitter.com/skvcet

Happy Reading!!!

Things that crossed my way!

Hi guys,

I have been wasting the past three days watching TV, surfing and roaming outside. It is quite bad that my classes begin day after tomorrow.

A Live Accident

My last exam was on July 2. Exam was over by 1 pm and I along with my friends was standing at the bus stop by 1.15 pm. We missed a bus narrowly and had to wait for the next bus which was only 1.45 pm. My friends Jegan and Rajesh were irritating me by discussing answers for the questions. Already the exam was tough and discussing answers made it worse. Around 30 students were there in the bus stop.

It was 1.30 pm and we heard a crashing sound some 100 meters away. A middle aged man was lying on the road and his Honda Activa was a few feet away. At the same time a Mahindra Scorpio was flying away. We realised the driver of the car was the culprit and before we could stop him, he drove away. We were waiting for the fallen man to get up, but he wasn’t getting up. So a group my college mates went to help him. We followed the first group.

We learned that he had stopped his vehicle since a dog was crossing the road and in the mean time the car hit him. There was nothing serious. He had little bruises in his leg, apart from a hamstring. His vehicle was quite badly damaged. It was 2 minutes before he got up and we guided him to the nearby shop and made him sit there. He was mentally shocked. He was sitting there until we caught the bus by 1.50 pm.

Movies I watched

I watched many movies in the past week including Ocean’s thirteen, Night Train, the Hills have Eyes, Raavanan and Panic Room. Ocean’s thirteen was as good as the first two parts. Night train was not a great movie, half the story was not clear. The Hills have Eyes was a horrific movie. The movie was as terrible as ‘Saw’ and I won’t recommend this movie to anyone. There has been mixed reviews about Raavanan, but I liked the movie to a certain extent. The second half was good, the first half was boring. Panic room was a good movie. It revolves around a mother and her daughter being locked up in a safety room, because of three robbers in their house. It was a good thriller movie, though the final scenes were unexciting. Of all the above, Ocean’s thirteen and Panic room are very good movies.

Improved settings in Apple’s new software

In my Apple creating headaches post, I mentioned the troubles with iOS4 software. Recently I found that the settings feature has been improved in this OS. Apple has paved way for Bluetooth in iPod. We can create playlists in iPod itself. Lot of settings have been improved. So, my anger with Apple has subsided a little.

If you give advice, then you must follow it

This happened to us a fortnight back. We were travelling back in a city bus after the exam. My classmate Sudarsan took ticket for four of us. Each ticket was Rs.4 and he gave Rs.20 to the conductor. The conductor gave four tickets, but didn’t give the balance. So Sudarsan asked for the balance. The conductor started to advice, ‘இன்னைக்கு சில்லறை நாலு ரூவா தரலைனா எப்பிடி இருக்கு உங்களுக்கு. நாளைக்கு அதிகாரி ஆனதுக்கு அப்புறம், நீங்க அஞ்சாயிரம், பத்தாயியாம்னு லஞ்சம் கேக்க கூடாது' (‘It hurts you when I don’t give balance today. Tomorrow when you become officials, you shouldn’t ask 5000 or 10000 as bribe’). He was continuously advising for 10 minutes, until we got down. The biggest comedy is that he never gave the balance. If he was really advising, he should have given back Rs.4. But his actions seem to show that he wanted the 4 Rs for himself and hence he blabbered.

That’s it for now.

Happy Reading!!!

Around my home on June 27!

Hi guys,

Of late, I found that my last post was my 50th post. A half century for me!!! What just started as a hobby, has become a passion inside me. Thanks to all of you who supported me all the way. I'll write more about the people who have helped me right from the beginning when I celebrate my blog's 1st anniversary next month.

In this post, I'll post some photos that I took in the terrace of my home on 27-6-10.

Sun light and shadows of leaves!

The tower of a nearby mosque!

A mobile phone tower at the back of my house!

The tower, as it appears from my home!

Another tower quite far away from my home!

Coconut leaves, tower and clouds!

With more leaves!

The end of cloth line tied to a post!

Look at how the end of leaves are curved!

White clouds in a clear sky!

Spider web in the antenna!

A crow sitting on a coconut tree!

The same crow!

An aeroplane behind the tower!

The aeroplane after it covered some more distance!

 Hope you enjoyed the pictures.

Happy viewing!!!

Apple creating Headaches!

Hi Guys,

A few days ago in my review of iPod post, I mentioned that I was having headaches with iTunes. Yesterday again a frustrating thing happened. Here, let me present you the problem that occurred to me yesterday night.

My iPod belongs to the second generation. The software version is 2.1. When I started using iTunes, update for version 3.1 was available (the one used in 3G iPod). Apple was asking me to update, but I preferred not to do. In the recent days, Apple has introduced iOS4 software for iPod touch and iPhone. Apple website claimed that the new software has many advanced facilities. So I thought of downloading the newer version.

Yesterday night, I opened iTunes and connected my iPod. I clicked the update software tab. iTunes said for downloading the software, I must update my iTunes to version 9.2 (mine was 9.1). So I updated iTunes first. The size of iTunes file was 80 MB. But there was no big difference between the two versions. This process took 20 odd minutes.

Then I downloaded the software. Initially I thought the process will take around 15 minutes. But the file size was 315 MB. It took 90 minutes to download the software. After downloading the software, the iPod was restored and then the newer software was installed.

The worse thing was that all the songs, movies and photos were deleted. The newer version is not as fast as the older one. Album grouping is also poor. Songs in a single album are shown separately.  There was no great difference between the versions.

I was frustrated at the end. The whole process took 400 MB data and 2 hours to download. Other than that I have to copy the songs newly. Installing windows 7 was much easier than this.

The lesson is ‘Don’t fall into Apple’s trap of updates’.

Happy Reading!!!

Engineering in Tamil - An Analysis

Hi guys,

My exams were over finally. Today’s exam was tough, though I managed to do it quite well. As I said in my earlier post, we have no holidays. Our V semester classes begin on July 7 (next Wednesday).

In this post, I’m going to write about my views on the topic ‘Introducing Engineering courses in Tamil’. Our TN Government has announced that Mechanical and Civil Engineering courses will be available in Tamil from this year.

Good for the Tamil Medium students

To me it appears to be a good move. Many students study in Tamil Medium in their school life. Sudden transformation to English medium in college disturbs their study levels. For instance in my first semester, I’ve observed such students being affected. Mainly they get an inferior feeling. They would have scored more than 90 % in their school exams and still they would not be able to get good marks here. Particularly the effect of transformation is devastating in the rural students than in the urban students.

Improvement in R&D field

Researches show that learning in mother tongue increases the creativity, grasping power and understanding level of students. They say this is the main reason why Chinese and Japanese are so strong in research and technology. So introducing Engineering in Tamil will increase the chances of improvement in R&D, which is in very poor state here.

All these things suggest that Engineering in Tamil is good. But there are too many problems such as learning materials, teachers, resource people, etc.

No Resource materials

Anna University has introduced books for these courses. From the appearance of the books it seems that they are prepared according to syllabus. Generally Engineering students use more than one book for studying (at least they refer to). They give a wide idea to the students. But when it comes to book according to a syllabus, all these reference things are missing. It merely appears like a school book. Rather than introducing the courses hastily, Government must take steps to translate the resource books and then introduce courses.

Tamil or English- Confusion for students

The current system is such that students can decide whether to pursue the course in English or Tamil. This is very wrong. How can professors take class for both students at a same time? Even if concepts can be explained, the technical term varies. This is senseless. Instead separate classes should be taken. Some say will again lead to partiality. We intelligent people always think learning and speaking in English is superior. This attitude must change.

Do we have Resource people?

Do we have professors who will be able to handle classes in Tamil? Tamil is our mother tongue, but still we don’t know the exact translations for technical terms. How many of you know the terms for Power, Torque, Bending moment, stress, force, equation, etc in Tamil? (I don’t know).

Full Tamil or a mixture

Also, introducing in Tamil must be a fully fledged one. One of my friends who studied in Polytechnic College, before joining here said that they had an option of writing their exams in Tamil or English. He said he used to write in English, but lot of students used to write in a combined form (???). They used to write things in Tamil and in between if a technical term comes then the term will be written in English. This is completely insensible.

We are stepping into the path now. It will take time to improve. But the improvements must be done, or else the purpose of introducing Tamil in Engineering will be rubbish. Students must be aware of their career plans and choose wisely according to that.

Happy Reading!!!