SUGGESTIONS FOR INDIAN HOCKEY – PART 1 OF 2

After a long time we hockey fans  had some reasons to cheer. India’s world ranking improved to 8^th from the 11^th position. The team also defeated former  world  champions germany after a gap of 10 years. One hopes that our team continues to improve and these green shoots of change are not transitory

 Lets analyse the main weak points of the Indian national team.  

1)    Fitness- we just don’t seam to have the stamina to last for the entire 70 minutes. This was recently seen very clearly in our hero world league match against Australia where we scored 3 quick  goals but ultimately lost the game by 8-3. Hopefully the reduction of playing time to 60 minutes (4 quarters of 15 minutes) should go in our favor since our players will get more time to recoup. We need a long term perspective plan to increase thee players muscle strength, specially targeting the youngsters.

2)    Defence- faults inside the circle in the dying minutes have proved to be India’s nemesis on a regular basis. We need to clearly work more on trapping the ball neatly says Jamie Dwyer, the Australian legend. I myself find the footwork of few burly defenders of our team rather slow.

3)    Penalty corner conversion- this is one area which has scene considerable improvement in recent years but still there is a lot of scope for improvement. We do have talented drag flickers like the young Rupindar Pall, Raghunath but I see that our team is not yet confident enough to try some variations which makes it very predictable for the opposite team to defend. As we all know that PC conversion has become a major source of goals, we should work on a long term plan to produce players who can net the ball like a machine gun

4)    Clinging  to the ball: I see our players hold on to the ball a lot longer than is perhaps necessary.  Perhaps this is because as youngsters they have been coached in the Indian philosophy of individual artistry. But this no more helps in the present era of short passes. We need to rectify this and train our players to eject the ball as soon as possible

I will discuss what according to me can be the solution to the crisis in hockey  in my next post

HOW TO CRACK GATE AND OTHER PSU EXAMS(CHEMICAL)

Hey!

GATE has now become important as some 4/5 PSUs are recruiting through it. It should require preparation for about 3/4 months to crack this exam. I scored a rank of 36 in 2013 with 67/100 marks. In general category one has to get below AIR 60 to be really sure of selection.

        From 2013, GATE was made online. Many of the answers are now required to be filed in numerically using the keyboard (ie they are not of the multiple choice types) So, one has to be thorough with the concepts. Yes! CONCEPTS hold the key as the questions are generally easy but conceptual. Accuracy, of course has become very important.

Regarding chemical engineering courses, all of them are important and must be thoroughly prepared.  BUT, it is very important to have an idea about the pattern of questions being asked. MOST IMPORTANT part of your preparation shall be solving the previous year GATE question papers (say last 20 years) available on www.unitoperation.com. Analyze the pattern and focus on areas where questions are being asked regularly. Every year they tend to ask similar questions from same areas. For example, there shall always be some questions on ‘drying’.

The 15 marks of English and mental ability should not require any special preparation as such. In fact, this area is quite scoring.

Questions from the 15 mark section of engineering mathematics are usually very easy. But due to the length/coverage of the syllabus, people tend to go unprepared. DONT DO this mistake. I found GATE maths book by ‘MADE EASY’ very suitable in this regard.

Thankfully, many of the chemical engg. courses are now available online at www.nptel.iitm.ac.in (NPTEL). Make full use of this resource as they have covered the courses very concisely

GENERAL GUIDELINES

·       Practice practice practice!!! Giving tests in exam like situations always helps

·       Coaching: thankfully, there are not many coaching institutes offering coaching in chemical engg. Coaching is NOT required as such if you can follow a disciplined approach. I have heard of this institute called Vaani (Hyderabad) which offers test series (and coaching also). Joining a test series should be beneficial as it gives momentum to your preparation

·       Be VERY THOROUGH with the important topics I have listed below

·       Do NOT leave any topic untouched while preparation. Try to cover the entire syllabus as sometimes a very easy question might be asked from the topic you left. This is specially the case with engineering mathematics portion

·       They are going to test your basic concepts especially in the one markers. So, have a good read of the theoretical portion of the textbooks Ex. Internal energy is a  state function/path function ? (2013).

CAUTION: LIST OF IMPORTANT TOPICS IS NOT EXHAUSTIVE!!!

KINETICS AND REACTOR DESIGN

·       V. Imp: Questions worth About 10 marks

·       Book/source: H S fogler

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Pseudo steady state hypothesis

2.  Questions based on design equations on CSTR, PFR, PBR

3.  Residence time distribution, Exit age function etc

4.  Diffusion effects in catalysis, pore diffusion etc

5.  single and multiple reactions in ideal reactors, 

·       Little difficult to prepare as fogler is full of complex examples which cannot be asked in GATE. Becomes difficult to decide what to study and what not!

MASS TRANSFER OPERATIONS

·       V. Imp: Questions worth About 10 marks

·       Book/source: NPTEL, TREYBAL

·       Imp subtopics

1.  2 film and other theories of diffusion

2.  Absorption-HTU, NTU concepts

3.  Distillation

4.  Counter and co current interphase mass transfer

5.  Drying

HEAT TRANSFER OPERATIONS

·       V. Imp: Questions worth About 10 marks

·       Book/source: NPTEL, J P Holman

·       VERY  scoring subject. Make sure you attempt well

·       Need not remember all the complex correlations. Just remember sieder tate and dietus bolter

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Counter and co current heat exchangers, LMTD concept etc

2.  Basics of radiation

3.  Importance/significance of various dimensionless numbers

4.  Biot number and lumped heat capacity problems

5.  Evaporators

6.  boiling

FLUID FLOW OPERATIONS

·        Imp: Questions worth About 6-8 marks

·       Book/source: NPTEL, FOX AND MC DONALD

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Pumps, NPSH

2.  Bernoulli theorem and its applications

3.  Concept of wetted perimeter

4.  Non Newtonian fluids (basic definition only)

5.  Fluidized beds

6.  Mixing and agitation- power number.

7.  Hagen–Poiseuille equation

8.  elementary boundary layer theory,

9.  free and hindered settling; 

PROCESS CONTROL

·       V.Imp: Questions worth About 10 marks

·       Book/source: SEBORG

·       Imp subtopics

1.  PID controller

2.  Feedback and feed forward control

3.  Routh and nyquist stability criteria

4.  Control characteristic of valves

5.  Characteristic curves of first and second order processes

PROCESS/EQUIPMENT DESIGN

·       NOT VERY imp. Questions worth About 4/5 marks

·       Book/source: chapter 2 of James M Douglas

·       Its not covered well at BITS. Don’t spend much time if you can’t understand

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Depreciation

2.  Annuity, amortization

3.  Optimization (refer old questions)

PROCESS CALCULATION

·       NOT VERY imp. Questions worth About 4marks

1.  Book/source: Himmelblau (few chapters)

·       Easy to score if you know your concepts well. Don’t spend much time on questions you have not practiced well. This happened to me. I spent a lot of time in solving a recycle and purge question because all of them seem doable. Ended up wasting a lot of time

·       IMP subtopics

2.  Humidity definitions

3.  Recycle and purge calculations

4.  Crystallization

CHEMICAL ENGG. THERMODYNAMICS

·       V.Imp: Questions worth About 10 marks

·       Book/source:  book by smith, ness and abbott.

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Solution thermodynamics –fugacity, excess properties etc

2.  Application of laws of thermo to equipments/process. Eg throttling is isoenthalpic

3.  Degree of freedom analysis

4.  Application of raoult’s law, henry’s law etc

5.   partial molar properties

CHEMICAL PROCESS TECHNOLOGY

·       V.Imp: Questions worth About 7/8 marks

·       Book/source:  NPTEL is a very good source

·       Very scoring

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Petro refining and petrochemicals

2.  Remember catalysts of major processes

3.  Polymerization (step, condensation), methods of polymerization like bulk, emulsion etc

4.  Sulfuric acid

MECHANICAL OPERATIONS/SELECTED CHEMICAL ENGG. OPERATIONS

·       Imp: Questions worth About 7/8 marks

·       Book/source:  McCabe and Smith is a very good source

·       Very scoring

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Cyclones

2.  Taylor series of sieves

3.  Bond’s law

CHEM ENGG. MATHEMATICS

·       VERY Imp: Questions worth  15 marks

·       Book/source: MADE EASY’S mathematics book is a very good source

·       Very scoring

·       In case you are unable to solve a question from differential equation etc, try putting the options to get the answer :) !!!

·       Imp subtopics

1.  Cauchy’s, residual theorem

2.  Numerical methods

3.  Directional(partial) derivatives

4.  Gauss’s, Green’s theorem etc

5.  Mean, median, mode, standard deviation