What Are the Real Challenges of Participating in Engineering Mining Games?

[i_wish_i_was_smart]

Mining Games!

i didn't know if this was suited for the engineering forum or the general discussion, since its about engineering but its not a question, if I'm in the wrong forum please forgive me

here goes, I'm so pumped i made my schools engineering mining games team, i am the the only first year in the team and the only first year to be part of the team in several years, I'm so psyched

 

[Evo]

Congratulations i_wish_i_was_smart!

I have absolutely no idea what it is you are a part of, but it sounds like an honor!

Seriously, congratulations!

 

[recon]

I did a search for Sudbury + Mining Games.

Although the competition is based on mining engineering applications, the real reason that the students come together as miners is to get to know one another, and build long-lasting friendships.

More http://www.engineering.uAlberta.ca/news.cfm?story=25077 .

Way to go, i_wish_i_was_smart! It sounds like great fun!

 

[i_wish_i_was_smart]

thanks guys
my school won last year i hope i won't let them down

Laurentian University earned top honors

 

[tribdog]

lol, your school won top honors.
I thought that in a mining competition you dug holes. Wouldn't top honors mean you came in last?

 

[Chrono]

What are you mining for?

 

[tribdog]

about 8 hours

 

[i_wish_i_was_smart]

mining games is a series of challenges they put you through, there is mine ventilation, mine rescue, mine management, drilling, open pit mine challenges

and no tribdog, its not about digin holes, but here chrono the mine everythin, coal copper nickel gold silver diamonds and the list goes on

 

[Chrono]

and no tribdog, its not about digin holes, but here chrono the mine everythin, coal copper nickel gold silver diamonds and the list goes on

Sounds like a lab we did in Environmental Geology. We didn't actually mine anything, it was just a game. But we had a sheet that had numbered sections and we would decide which section we would drill and he would tell us if we hit anything. It was a cool lab. I enjoyed it.

 

[tribdog]

I actually did a little mining in my day. I worked at Battle Mountain Gold Company for about a year and did a summer at the Marigold Mine. Both in Battle Mountain, NV. I was also in charge of the largest placer operation in the world, well not really in charge, my job was to stop the conveyor belts every couple of hours pound large rocks that were jamming things up using a large sledge hammer. I also ran a jig table, kept an eye on the tailings dam and once I climbed into a huge tank normally filled with cyanide and scrubbed the inside clean. The overwhelming majority of the gold was microscopic, but I got to hold a gold bar once. It was about the size of a brick and weighed about 80 pounds. Oh and I've walked through a cloud of Chlorine Gas so powerfull that it ruined 100s of thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment by eating all the copper off the circuit boards-very nasty stuff.

 

[tribdog]

and I dug holes

 

[i_wish_i_was_smart]

geez tribdog you sure done alot, yes mining in general is about digging, but as engineers we don't do the digging, we let other people do it

 

[tribdog]

No, as engineers you come up with brilliant new ideas that one of the peons could tell you in 3 seconds isn't going to work. Mining engineers have a really problem in that they forget that they are working with dirt and rocks and mud which require a lot of brute strength to get them to behave. Engineers always want to finesse a solution, and usually cause more work for everyone in the long run

 

[i_wish_i_was_smart]

it works on paper, if it works on paper it doesn't mean its actualy going to work out in the field bout there is a good chance it will, but i would only listen to a veteran who has experience, not some schmo, as engineers you have to keep pushing the envelop, and it doesn't always work no one is perfect, a workplace doesn't alway go smoothly, I've been a worker on a mine, and I've also worked with engineers for training, and not everything is perfect but not everything crap