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An actual Engineering lab based on ST:TOS
Enclosed please find TREKLAB , an actual lab report I wrote for a material
science class at Highline Community College, where I was preparing for my
mechanical engineering degree. When one of the two instructors for the class
(also the dept. head) remarked that he hated grading the lab reports, several
of the students handed in reports especially with this in mind. My report was
by far the longest, conceivably the cleverest and is probably the only one of
interest to non-engineers. The lab got an A+.
Posted April 30th, 1989 by the author, Trevor Laib.
Send any EMAIL to [ CIS: 72310,2647 ] or [ BITNET: 96899170@WSUVM1 ]
or write: Trevor Laib
NW 120 Ann St. #21
Pullman, WA 99163
(509)-332-5217
Please do me the favor of not distributing this in incomplete or altered form.
ENGR 260________Lab #9____________6/6/87_____by Trevor Laib
with Barry Mannie
and Ling Wen
HEAT TREATMENT LAB
Captain's log stardate 3125.03
"We have been in orbit about Sterilus 4 for nearly a month now as
negotiations with the local miners grind slowly to their conclusion. The
miners, non-human settlers from a nearby planet, are thrilled to find the
Federation willing to purchase their products but are determined to get top
price for their goods despite local lack of quality control. Federation
negotiators have had difficulty explaining the concept to the miners, and our
time is running short. The Enterprise's services are desperately required at
dozens of conveniently small crises carefully spread all over the conveniently
unexplored regions of the galaxy. These negotiations MUST end soon."
The Captain signed the transcript of his log entry and handed it back to
yeoman Rand. Leaning back into the command chair the bridge, he activated the
intercom. "Engineering."
"Engineering, Mr. Scott here."
"Kirk here. Scotty, I can feel our ratings slipping even as we speak.
The Nielsen families just won't put up with another week of the Enterprise
dabbling about in orbit around some two-bit planet that doesn't even have any
sultry female scientists about. Let's go down onto the planet's surface and
get beaten up or something."
"Ah, certainly Captoin! I was gettin' a wee bit worried that you'd be
takin' McCoy or Spock this time. I haven't gotten a good blow to the head for
two or three episodes now."
"Well, maybe I'd remember you more often if you'd fixed my computer
terminal the way I'd wanted."
"Ah, but Ceptain. There could'na be more than twenty VHS machines in the
galaxy an' they're all in museums. I canna see goin' to that trouble just ta'
watch a few twentieth century television shows."
"Mr. Scott! `T.J. Hooker' is not just a T.V. show, it's the finest in
early earth art! Now are you coming or not?"
"I'll meet you in the transporter room right away, Capten!"
"Damn right."
McCoy stopped Kirk on the way to the transporter room.
"Captain!! Surely you're not going down on to the planet in your condition!!"
"In what condition, Bones? I'm feeling as fit as a whistle, er,
oboe...um, you know what I mean."
"You've been ignoring my reminder notices about your teeth!! It's been
six months since you had a checkup!! Remember, since you're allergic to
Garbinol I have to use ancient dental practices!!"
"But why should that keep me from going down to the planet?"
"Jim!! I had to use old, outdated, primitive techniques!!"
"Easy Bones, you're frothing."
"By now the little holes I drilled in your teeth will have developed into
cavities!! But if you wait too long they'll become abscesses and I'll have to
refer you to an oral surgeon!! I don't know why but the old manuals were very
specific that I can't let that happen!!"
"Look Bones, why are so riled up? This can wait days. Why don't you
tell me what's really wrong."
"I'm not on the landing party!!"
"Neither is Spock. Sulu, Checkov and Uhuru are staying too. It's not a
big trip, Scotty and I are just going to get beat up a little, that's all."
"But I haven't had a good blow to the head in weeks!!"
"If you're going to keep acting like this you won't get any at all until
we reach Rigelus 4. Will it make you happier if we bring along a few
expendable crewmen and I let you watch them conveniently die?"
"I'm a country doctor, Jim, not a microwave oven!!"
"Been dipping into the medicinal supplies again, doctor? I'm going to
have to talk to you about that one of these days."
"I'm a country doctor, Jim, not a venusian slime-beast!!"
"Nurse Chapel! McCoy's having one of his fits!"
Bones slumped against the Captain's shoulder, "I'm a country doctor, Jim,
not an Iranian arms smuggler!!"
"Nurse!"
Kirk strode into the transporter room, disturbing the napping Mr. Scott.
"Capton! What took ya' so long?"
"I had a little trouble with our resident junkie," Kirk thumbed the
intercom button, "Security."
"Security. Mr. Spittle here."
"Please send two men down to the transporter room for the landing party."
"Aye, aye sir, and I'll notify their widows immediately."
"Thank you."
"Ah! The security men are here." Kirk marched up onto the transporter
platform and assumed a heroic pose. His chief engineer walked up and stood
next to him.
"Captin', why would yoo be standin' like that?"
"Why Mr. Scott, I'm surprised that you should ask. I want to look good
in case I receive a blow to the head immediately upon beaming down rather than
soon after. You can never tell if some beautiful space diplomat might be
watching."
The two security men climbed on the transporter platform. The younger
one stopped and stood stunned, looking down at his shirt and holding it away
from his waist.
Kirk tapped him on the shoulder, "Anything wrong, mister?"
"Captain, I'm wearing a red shirt. I'm - I'm going to die."
"Well, hey! We all have to go sometime. You'll just go sooner. Ensign
Glockenspiel, please energize."
"I'm going to..."
"-AAAARGH!!"
The young security man fell to the ground, his red shirt smoking. Kirk
shouted, drawing his phaser, "Phasers on stun! Fire at will!"
The second security man emptied his phaser into the dead redshirt. Then
he turned to Kirk and said savagely, "Are you happy now?! Why couldn't you
just let Will rest in peace? -AAAARGH!!"
As he fell, he clutched melodramatically at Kirk's chest. He lay on the
ground for a bit, and then died.
"Thank god that's over. You know Scotty, I always worry they might hit
one of us regulars by accident." Kirk shoved his phaser back into his belt.
"Aye, Capton'. Well let's be going out and gettin' our heads banged."
Just then a two-by-four swung out of the darkness and mist around them
and smashed Scotty on the back of the head.
"Hey, don't forget me!" Kirk yelled, but it was too late. They already
had.
Kirk followed the trails in the slime and dirt across the strange
landscape and through the cafeteria, where he ordered some coffee and a donut.
He dipped the donut in the coffee and scrubbed the mud off his boots with it.
Soon, peeking through the bushes, he found his chief engineer. Scotty was
sitting on a patch of concrete surrounded by three skinny aliens and rubbing
the back of his head.
"Aye, laddies! That were a fine one, it was! Only Nomad could'a done
better!"
"You are the chief engineer of the starship Enterprise?" one of the
aliens, a skinny fellow with pale skin and damp-looking brown hair asked.
"Aye."
"You know how high-strength steels and other metals are made?" asked
another alien, as skinny as the first but with unkempt dark brown hair.
"Aye."
"And you know where we can get a decent cheese dip?" asked the third
skinny alien, a shorter fellow with straight black hair.
"I'm afraid I cannot help ya there laddies."
"Well, two out of three ain't so bad. Now! You will explain why the
Federation is unhappy with these metal rods we have been trying to sell!" The
first alien held out four standard metal samples: three steel, one aluminum.
The third alien said, "We have tested them on your machines and they have
found these strengths according to your confusing system of measuring such
things. Rb indicates measurement on the Rockwell `b' scale, and Rc indicates
we used the `c' scale, where Rb 100 is approximately equal to Rc 20."
CODE: pure 1018 1045 4145
METAL:______Aluminum____Steel_______Steel________Steel
HARDNESS 23.5 Rb 80 Rb 9.5 Rc 10.5 Rc
RUPTURE 46,300 psi 71,700 psi 107,800 psi 117,000 psi
ELONGATION 19.6 % 16 % 19.8 % 11.1 %
"So laddies, these are the figures you'd be giving for your finished
parts?"
"Yes."
"But haven't you been heat-treating your parts? I can see the Federation
would be a mite unhappy about buying your product if your strength and
hardness figures are so low."
The unkempt alien cocked his head back and looked at Scott out of the
side of his face. "Heat-treatment? If you heat up steel it melts."
The first alien took Scott by the arm, "You're going to have to show us
this `heat-treatment' immediately!"
Just then Kirk stepped out of the bushes. He waved his phaser
menacingly, "All right, move away from Scotty and no one will get hurt."
The short alien grabbed Scott and held a phaser to his head. "One move
and he'll never see another season!"
"Hold it, laddies! He's just upset 'bout not gettin' a blow to the
head!"
The remaining alien popped up in the bushes behind the Captain and coolly
leveled him with a two-by-four to the back of the head. Kirk fell dramatically
to the ground. He lay there for a moment, turned his eyes to Scotty, and then
passed out.
"He may be a ham, but he's a good captain none the less," Mr. Scott said
with a sigh. "Now let's be teachin' you youngsters about heat-treatment."
Mr. Scott proceeded into the lab carrying the four metal samples.
Finding the furnaces he set one for 1650 degrees fahrenheit, just above an
important temperature called the upper critical range for steel. The other he
set for 900 degrees. He placed the aluminum in the cooler oven, the steel in
the hot oven and then he closed their doors. "Now we'll be lettin' those
puppies equalize for a good hour or so. Wi' both a these metals, at the
higher temperature you'd be findin' a state that cannot exist naturally at
room temperature. But by rapid coolin' o' the metals, we can lock these
states into the metal. A bit like how rapid cooling o' water can produce snow
instead of ice, but in metals, the states mostly all look alike to the naked
eye."
Mr. Scott and the young aliens all went outside to play hackysack, while
right on cue, an alluring young alien scientist showed up to run her fingers
through Kirk's hair as he woke up.
"Mmmmmm...I was afraid that the network had forgotten this was in my
contract," Kirk said. He rolled over to take advantage of the situation.
Just then Mr. Scott, still learning to play hackysack, batted the little bag
over the bushes and right onto the still-sensitive spot on the back of Kirk's
head. The Captain passed out, mercifully without dramatics, leaving the
alluring young alien scientist to contemplate Kirk's receding hairline.
After about an hour, Scott took the lads back into the lab. They
quenched the 4145 sample in oil, the 1018, the 1045 and the aluminum samples
in water. Scott sat back in one of the rickety lab chairs, smiling, as the
aliens tested the metal samples.
The short alien was first, "Hey! The aluminum tests at 33.2 Rb! It's
gone up almost 10 points!"
"I can get yee a good bit better than that for the aluminum, lad. You
just have to age-harden it afterwards."
"What's that?"
"Well ta use the ice analogy, by quenchin' it, you've trapped the higher-
temperature phase, let's call it snow, at room temperature. But if you heat it
up a touch, you'd find tiny precipitates, little microscopic bits o' ice,
scattered in the snow. With the aluminum, the same thing happens. If you
heat it up a bit after it's been quenched, you form microscopic bits o' low-
temperature phase scattered in the locked high-temperature phase, and the
strength goes up."
They tried it, in a furnace heated to about 400 degrees. After the
sample had been in the furnace for about 30 minutes, the aliens removed it and
quenched it again. Then they resumed testing.
CODE: pure 1018 1045 4145
METAL:______Aluminum____Steel_______Steel________Steel
HARDNESS
AFTER HEAT-
TREATMENT 33.2 Rb 65.8 Rb 26.5 Rc 54.3 Rc
AFTER
AGING 55 Rb ------- ------- -------
RUPTURE 68,800 psi 68,000 psi 138,800 psi 168,800 psi
ELONGATION 14.3 % 28.6 % 12.6 % > 2 %
Scott beamed, "Ah! Now there are some numbers you can be proud of! Star
Fleet itself might be buyin' some of your metals wi' numbers like that!"
"But Mr. Scott, " one of the aliens asked, "What happened? Why did the
results come out this way?"
"Why laddie, I was hopin' you'd ask that. The aluminum got harder
because the precipitate I mentioned before..."
"Yeah?"
"... interferes with the movement of something called dislocations.
These dislocations are little bits of stress in the metal's structure. When a
whole pile o' them get together you have yourself a fracture."
"Then how does it work in steel?"
"In steel, your carbon content causes problems. At high temperature the
iron atoms sit in a pattern that has lots o' room for carbon atoms to fit in.
At low temperatures, the pattern changes ta' one that has less room for the
extra atoms. If cooled slowly, the steel forms mixes o' other phases to fit
the carbon in. But if you quench it, you trap the carbon in. This makes a
new kind o' phase called martensite. Then the jammed carbon atoms stop
dislocations, just like the precipitates in aluminum."
"But why didn't the 1018 get harder?"
"Not enough carbon. 1018 means its unalloyed steel with 0.18% carbon.
Just like 4145 means manganese-chromium-molybdenum steel with 0.45% carbon."
"Mr. Scott, you've solved all our problems! Can we buy you a drink or
something?"
Just then they heard a sound at the door. Kirk stood, phaser in his
right hand, the alluring young scientist on his left. "Don't move! C'mon
Scotty, let's blow this crazy joint!"
Scotty turned to the closest alien and whispered, "Now it wouldn't be
right for you ta let a guest go home so quick, especially seeing as how you
just offered the poor fellow something to wet his poor dry throat."
The alien winked at Scott and then gestured to the alluring scientist.
With her free hand she pulled a two-by-four off a table and solidly whacked
Kirk on the back of the head with it. Dropping the phaser, he slumped,
puzzled, to the ground.
"Ah, now that's the spirit!" Scott cried, and they all went out and had
a damn good time.
The end.
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