Factory Week

You hear so much in the news about China, the land of factories. We are living in a middle of one-such area in China, where you can hardly take a bike ride without passing a little factory making one machined part or an entire machine. Last week there were two school field trips to local factories.

First, Tim took his Chemistry students to see some cool Chemistry at a magnet factory that manufactures very strong and very tiny magnets for Nokia cell phones. They also went to see electroplating at another factory that makes the last 10 cm of German cars like Audi and BMW: the chrome-plated tail pipe.

Here is Tim to describe the fine details of his field trip:

The students had a great time learning about magnets. They were most impressed by the free magnets they were given before the lecture. They couldn't stop playing with these fascinating little nickel-plated toys. Some of them even got some much larger ones that were extremely hard to take apart, and a little dangerous when they snapped together again. The large magnets are so powerful you can place one on top of your wrist and one on the bottom and they are still attracted.

These magnets are attracted to the coins in the student's wallet

It was also shocking to the students that so much work went into just one little part of a cell phone.

These are tens of thousands of little tiny magnets that must be checked, counted and sorted by hand.

These even smaller magnets are zinc-coated because they are exposed to the outside of the phone. They are sorted by hand, 100 to a square card.

The tailpipe factory was a huge production all for the last 2 inches of high-end cars. They even make the pipe for the Lamborghini. The students got to tour the whole factory line from R&D to the packing of the final product. However, the purpose of the trip was to see the electroplating. The pipes up to seven different layers of nickel, copper and chromium. The electroplating process uses electrical current that changes metals into ions (these dissolve into water) and then the ions change back into metal again, but onto the pipes. This involves large vats of warm, bubbly, colorful chemicals...oh, and it smelled bad too.

Chromium vat

Final product: shiny tailpipes

Despite what you might think about China's environmental record, the general manager of the factory said that there are very strict environmental regulations and their waste-water is closely monitored by the local government before it leaves the plant. They also recycle/sell the leftover metal sludge.

So there is your Chemistry lesson for the day.
Sarah back now to tell you about the less-technical, climb-on-trucks First Grade field trip.

Let me make myself perfectly clear: the tractors and other farm machinery made here at the John Deere factory are made for domestic China farms and some other Asian markets. John Deere for the U.S. are made in Iowa. At this factory they are building machinery to mechanize rice planting and harvesting for smaller-scale farms.

Honorary First Grader. It helps that his best friend's father is the factory general manager

After a slide show of big trucks and tractors, we had a fascinating tour of the factory line. At one end of the building we saw the engine being assembled, at the other end a tractor drove out the door.

And then we got to climb on some trucks.

One big wheel and one little boy

Climbing on tractors - can't get much better than that.