Hallo! Welcome back to day 10 of my blog! Today we took public transit to InHolland’s College of Applied Sciences in Delft, which is just outside of Rotterdam. Colleges in the Netherlands are very different than the states, mainly because it is a much smaller country. Here, each school has it’s own “focus” or as they call it “faculty.” This campus’s main focus was Aeronautical Engineering (similar to Aerospace) taught in either English (mostly) or Dutch. It is very interesting to hear about this department, because Pitt does not offer this type of engineering. There are pros and cons to having only one discipline, you have all your resources focused on one topic, but you have no diversity of thought, leading to less educational progress and innovation. There are about 700 students in the school, 42 staff, and the first-year dropout rate is 40% (very very high due to the program’s difficulty). About 35% of the students are international (limited to 4 people per country) and only 10-20% of these international students are women. This is low compared to Pitt Engineering, which is around 30% female. Additionally, only 5-10% of the students enrolled in the Dutch program are women, due to the fact that it is very hard to encourage women to participate in technical degrees in this country. This made me very grateful to be in a school in the States with a higher population of women and diversity of major.
The school has an interesting setup, giving a more hands-on approach to learning. They require that every student does an internship in their third year, they have an immersive project where they build a plane in their second year, and they have multiple core area focused in their first year. Despite my apprehension on the diversity of the school, having this tactile experience would be especially beneficial to my learning. It’s hard to imagine there are sophomores that can build a plane, while I am a freshman who only knows the basics! Another aspect of this school that I loved was how walkable and bikeable it was, with a lot of greenery and modern architecture.
A few of the teachers and students talked to us about the school, and one person gave us an entire lecture on Introduction to Aviation. It was very interesting, learning about how they use flight simulators and augmented reality to improve knowledge of flight. We were able to see and use an actual flight simulator and walk through the lab that they have for testing and creating composite materials. They taught us about flow separation, angle of takeoff, stabilization for motion, thrust counters, and winglets. The sustainability of winglets was especially cool: they were invented in the 70s to reduce the vortex that the wings create, which makes more less fuel consumption and a more efficient flight.
We also learned about how the future of sustainability in aviation, how engineers are focusing on reducing fuel consumption of planes, and using hydrogen to power planes. This part has a lot of application to my conference paper on hydrogen trucks in the spring, so I was very interested. It is apparent that there is more of a market for hydrogen fuel in Europe. This applies to the concept to consumer ideas, because the future concept of aviation is revolving around sustainability. In order to achieve this, the market must stay small, which is easy in Europe, due to its centralization. Therefore, hydrogen fuel in Europe is more popular due to existing infrastructure and centralization.
Additionally, the concept of consumer ideas apply to the creation of aviation by the Wright brothers in 1903. Their concept was flight, which later changed to defense in the World Wars, and later commercialization in 1945. Fokker industries, the heart of aviation in the Netherlands, went out of business in the 1990s. Due to this, InHolland lost a lot of their connections and appeal. They had to apply concept to consumer marketing tactics in order to attract new students. This led to higher-end technologies and more innovation in the school.
After the lectures, we had a lovely lunch. My favorite part was the delicious pear. I learned that pears are very popular in Europe, due to the ideal climate for their growth. After lunch, we did a workshop called “Crazy Gliders” where we split into teams and created foam airplanes, and then competed to see which would fly the farthest. Our team (Delft Dynasty) got last place, because we did so many test runs it started falling apart. We won in spirit I guess.
Afterwards, Frank and Dr. Bursic treated us to freak shakes, which are crazy milkshakes with donuts on top. They were huge, but delicious. Next, we are planning to do a boat cruise around the town of Delft (sponsored by the Bursics- Thank you very much it was beautiful!!) The coolest part of the canal cruise was hearing about Johannes Vermeer (the painter who made Girl With a Pearl Earring and the Milkmaid) and how he lived in Delft.
Today was a very cool day, learning how rocket science applies to sustainability and business. Tomorrow we are going to DeltaWorks, where we get to learn how the locks and dams work. I am very excited! Until then, Doei!
