Q: Why did the transformer hum?

A: Because it didn't know the words.

Haha... Yeah, I know... Lame.

I went to Flatiron yesterday and today to observe a core test. Basically, here's the deal... You remember how a simple motor works? You have a doughnut-shaped magnet and an electromagnet on a shaft goes in the doughnut hole? Yeah...

Anyway, if you look at the picture above, they pulled the generator apart because they were going to replace the "stator" in the diagram above. (So, the turbine, generator shaft, and rotor are missing in this generator right now.)

Here's a close-up of a stator:

Right now, there "Stator Coils" are removed so all that's left is the "Stator Core." Before they put the new stator coils in, they test the stator core to ensure the iron is "good," and that the stator core was assembled correctly. Here's a picture I found on the Internet from when they did a core test at Parker Dam:
Anyway, to test these things, they wrap some wire around it and run tons of juice through it, creating a HUGE electromagnet. The test we did today was powered by a semi-trailer-mounted generator... (The oil filters were about 1ft tall :-) During the test, we used our $30,000 camera to look at the stator to make sure it was ok.

It's really weird to stand in the middle of a coil like that... You're exposed to almost all the energy from a large diesel generator and yet it doesn't affect you. If you were to be exposed to it electrically, you'd be fried before you could say, "Agh!" Magnetic fields... weird. I heard you can't bring a mechanical watch in because it ruins them.

We ate lunch at the only local restaurant... I'm sick of eating lunch in old, beat-up bars. They're always run down, dirty-looking, dark, and weird, but they usually have good hamburgers... Whatever! I did pass up my chance to eat Rocky Mountain Oysters... The people I was with tried to get me to order them, but fortunately, someone else from our group told me what they were, so I didn't. I probably would have thrown up when I heard what they were :-)