MTS Shore Stories

[Intel Source: bothenook] Justin Cline, who's been posting very infrequently over at God Can't See Underwater, surfaced long enough to provide two very good posts from the perspective of a Staff Pickup Junior Staff Instructor at NPTU Charleston (where I was a Shift Eng from '93-'95). The first is a good snapshot of where prototype training is today, while the 2nd is a great story about a checkout that took a wrong turn. It inspired me to write about a "trans-phase" exam answer that got passed around the staff back when I was a young Lieutenant...

The "trans-phase" was, if I remember right, basically a mid-course "knowledge check" that all students had to take; it was a way to make sure that someone wasn't just slipping through without learning any real facts. Sometimes it uncovered people who were doing just that. This particular student was an Electrician's Mate, so he had some "tougher" electrical questions on his exam. The question was basically: 'How does hydrogen gas get produced in the battery?' His answer was classic (remember, this is an EM): 'Neutrons from the reactor come in, and collide with the water molecules, knocking off a hydrogen atom. Two hydrogen atoms combine to form H2.'

If I remember right, the "GCE" the grader wrote on the test paper covered the entire page. (For those who've forgotten your battery equations, it looks like most of them can be found here.)