Letter to Editor - Indian Express - Unpublished

When some people say that wiping out of pseudo national parties like BSP is in the benefit of the country, intellectuals question their sanity.
Mayawati refuses to make sane comments when so ever. The comment on specific likes of a community and the later clarification adds to her list. She once said that everything that goes in India should be in benefit of the Bahujan Samaj whether it is repeated conduction of elections till BSP gains a majority in Indian politics. Don't we really want the parties like of her to be out of the politics space so that new brighter minds come and fill the long floating vacuum? Can some intellectuals to help me gauge my sanity.

- Avijit Sharma, Delhi

Letter to Editor

Pesti-Yeh Pyas Hai Badi

Once again by the laudable efforts of CSE about the findings on the pesticides in the colas, have shown how these giants deride the BIS prescribed standards. The standards they have to follow in the western countries are never met here and still the Indian customer runs around emulating west. They in fact never try to meet those standards deliberately as it involves more investment of money. All they are concerned about are the profits they carry back home. A deterrent example should be set that in future nobody tries to breach standards and dupe people. Also this story should be well blown up by the media to ravage the money that is put by them in advertisements instead of trying to follow the standards.

Post in Indian Express - Tuesday, Aug 01, 2006

Bofors Ghost

THE ghost of the Bofors scandal has long haunted the nation. Every time a new book/interview emerges, a whole new series of allegations and cover-ups come into play. Yet the information thrown up never leads us anywhere. How long do our politicians plan to fool us like this?

— Avijit Sharma, Delhi

Intern Experiments - 6

hii... so now the pull force experiment has starting showing result.. however it has not solved the problem fully. the door pull force if is around 4kgf then it can be considered ok.. but if one has to apply force higher than this its is considered to be a problem.we have drawn a correlation crudely btw the values of pressure and the corresponding force.
the force of 4kgf is shown when the pressure falls by .01psi below the atm pressure.hence we have fixed our aim to solve the problem by brining the force down to 4kgf in all the products.
we have been trying to reduce the force through vacuum valve and the fan delay .in some of the products this has proven to be sufficient , but in some products the force still is more than 4kgf. this is due to the variation in the different products of the the same model.
we then planned to carry out experiments as to where has been the differnce btw the products so that we can tackle the problem dually. we did the benchmarking of the two products which showed the two extreme of the results.however the benchmarking didnt gave us substantial results.
we then swapped the plenums of the two products so that the most important variable of the whole phenomena, fan can show us the difference when the plenum is replaced.

Intern Experiments - 5

hi friends .. i am back again...
meanwhile i also started working on the other project about which i mentioned earlier. this was the designing of the box on the top of the refrigerator...
we prepared engg drwings of a no of proto types.. we kept finalinzing one of the proto and started working on it... till now we have made three different protos ...
i did a lot of work before i started designing the proto.. i made a list of the most common things that are kept on the top of the ref.. this i made by connversing with the different people here in the whirlpool.. i then measured the dimensions of the those objects which this box was supposed to accommodate... when i had a rough idea of the dimension of the objects.. design process actually started...after this i decided the dimensions of the height and the width of the various other important features incorporating the previously measured dimensions...
i will post the photographs of the differnt proto that we made... thankfully the proto's were appreciated thoroghly here...:))
we then conducted a field review visit to bombay to get the feedback as well as inoit fromt he direct customers ..will write about the deatils of the visit next time.
also will write about the developements of the other project also..

Intern Experiments - 4

sorry for not been able to write for long... we have done a lot of experiments since then.... i will try to give you a feel of it...
we have identified the two main culprits behind the vacuum formation...( vacuum is something which we call it here . .. it is actually pressure falling below atm pressure .. so in that case its a kind of vacuum)
one it is the slamming of the door .. which we cant do without.... and the other is the starting of the fan soon after the slamming...we tried to seperate the effects due to the two.. we considered the delay of the fan motion after the door slamming...
the pressures come back to normal after a span of approx 30 s.. so we delayed the fan motion for 30 s.. so as two identify the two factors seperately...
the results were very conclusive and the pressure was reduced considerably.. the fan and the slamming together produce higher vacuum than the two separted effects... the peak occured on slamming..
these experiments were conducted in a kind of raw manner... then these experiments were conducted more precisely and acuurately in the performance lab, where the temp and humidity of the chamber is maintained at constant.
we then conducted our experiments there to confirm our findings...

after this we started a new set of experiments about which will i write soon...

Intern Experiments - 3

hii frnz... moving ahead.. we have done a lot of experiments by now ... the problem if properly understood says that the product shows unusually high pull force if the RC/Fc door is opened before the next opening .....hence the culprit id the opening of the door.
we have started with understanding the flow of air inside the refrigerator when the door is opened... for this we tried to make model of a ref whose side walls were made of perspex walls and witht the help of a smoke machine tried to see the flow.. .. unfortunately the flow was too turbulent in FC and the flow was thus not visible properly... although we got some hints as too what can be the most influential causes behind the phenomena.. they can be the turning offf of the fan and the slamming of the door...
our next set of experiments are based on difffernetiating there effects on the pressure falll..
there has been a lot of previous work on this.. and this problem is faced by all leading refrigerator makers.....a vacuum valve is the latest addition by companies....

Intern Experiments - 2

Resuming the details about my stay here at whirlpool i have also been given a side project to design a utility box which can be placed on the top of the refrigerator , where the things which are generally kept in a households can be kept nicely and efficiently by using the top space of ref.Whirlpool india has previously launched a box which is kept under the refrigerator and can be used to keep vegeatables which are generally not kept inside the refrigerator ex potatoes ,onions etc.
I am directed to work on the similar terms.
As about the first project we have started on with DOE(design of experiment.. thats what they call experiments here).We have performed a no of DOE's to understand the problem.
In the coming posts will let you know about the what are the performed and planned DOE
's...

Intern Experiments - 1

hi folks ..i have started with my practical training here in pune at whirlpool of india limited. I am sorry that i was unable to write entry last week.Its very difficult to access internet here due to long working hours and strictness in the company for using i-net.Still i would try to write atleast one per week.I have been assigned two projects here.
first deals with reducing the pull force of the refrigerator door in case of double door (global no frost) model product.Description of my project in brief is as follows.When the refrigerator is in on cyle that is when the compressor is running ,if we open the freezer compartment(FC) and then slam it and then try to open the refrigerator compartment(RC) in quick succession of around 10 s interval, then the pull force required to pull the RC door gets increased.
will post the details of the second soon....