Campus impressions

View from Gløshaugen campus towards the city and the fjord.

The international house.

Typical for Norway. Cutted grass - everywhere and always (when not being covered by snow. ;-))

Gløshaugen campus - very close, there is the sports center, just the street to the left and there it is. ;-)

Dragvoll campus buidings in the late afternoon.

The way from Dragvoll campus to the forest I swam most often in summer (Estenstadmarka). There are nearly never cars passing by. :-)

View from there over the ocean/ fjord.

On the Dragvoll campus.



... and where I went durig the break.
Here in Norway, they make a break of 15 minutes after each 45 minutes.

One of the buildings at Gløshaugen campus where I am most often.

... and then you see this...

... then a second...

Inside, is looks maybe even better - with a library and impressive architecture...
First, you pass one portal...


The university's main building. I think it is really impressive - especially when it is dark.

Colorful autumn

1.10. sunset at the ocean nearby (maybe half an hour by bike).

And one more impression from the student village in Moholt.
... most of the children here are blond...

For example, this snow pillow - filled with an anti-freeze. The pressure difference (due to the snow on it) is recorded with a pressure cell.
Maybe also comfortable for sleeping?...

They have the normal equipment (temp., wind, precipitation, humidity, ... measurement tools here) and some special snow fall and snow denisty mesuring methods.

Way to the climate station...

Some of the last blueberries.



The girl I got to know about the excursion from asked me whether she should take some pictures of me. I would have forgotten that. But so you have them. ;-)

And this is another reason why I joined the excursion: the surrounding. The moss looks especially nice in autumn - so colorful and soft. :-)
They have the same moss here that we used for our model railway in the past...



They said this writer is rather old but still works since it is a German quality product.
But they also use pressure transfusers,..., generate electrical signals that are sent to NTNU campus so that they don't always have to come here to check the measurement results.


A v-shaped concrete metal weir is used to determine the water flow more accurate. Since the geometry of this v is known and the water depth is measured in the calm zone behind the weir, it is possible to calculate the water that flows out.

A girl I met told me about a hydrology excursion that she would take part in. That sounded interesting and so I went to the professor and asked if I could join.
You see the result of his answer. ;-)

They showed how they measure the input parameters for the hydrologic water balance.
Here for example the discharge measurement, i.e. the waterflow out of the catchment area of the river.
... in fact, the participation in excursions is a nice way to see different parts of the region... ;-)



During daytime this hut is opened.

The last evening sunshine from Estenstadhytta in the upper part of the forest.


... no matter how fast/ old you are.

This is further up in the forest. A nice place to go after the (working) day.

This is one view from the Dragvoll campus. In summer, I went very often to this forest to swim in the lake in the middle of it. Now, it is too cold for swimming. But therefore, there is this wonderful smell of straw and the warm late-summer sunshine instead of that.


And this is the fiew from the bridge towards the fjord.

I noticed that I didn't tell you about my impression when I visited the city center for the very first time. For me, it looked a bit like Venice, but cleaner and less crowded. At that day, a gondola was travelling down the river...
This is the bridge that you have to cross to reach the city center.

I just went through the city when I saw this... thing.
A "giga-"phone designed by architecture students from NTNU.

When I passed by and looked back, I saw something which is really typical for Norway. Nearly every second household has one: a great, big trampolin!
This is somewhere in Bymarka, a lake area west of Trondheim. First, I only saw this nice, calm and isolated house with the (very good and expensive) insolation on the roof.

Not far away from Trondheim. I went there after university when I felt the wish to see some autumn impressions...

It already starts... the trees are turning yellow and red.
This picture shows one of the fiews from the Gløshaugen campus.

Field investigations for a planned office building - Stjørdal

Measurements with a high-precision GPS.

Grey clay at the bottom.
In Norway (apart from that only in Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland and Alaska), there exists "quick clay". This type of clay is a potential danger for builing houses or streets.
It was formed during the last glaciation and since it is rich in salt and water it has a rather open structure.
Due to rain water drainage, the salts can be washed out.
Then when undisturbed, the clay can still be stable. But as soon as being disturbed - even a soft blow by human hand would be enough - it will liquefy. Then huge landslides, which are not seldom in Norway, can happen.
The problem is that you can't see it with your naked eye if the clay is a quick clay.


Undisturbed soil sampling.


Vane testing to determine the undisturbed and remoulded shear strength.


These are 100 kg (!) on the metal rod. It was drilled into the ground by hand and the number of half-turns per 20 cm were counted.
From the university, we got steel-toe shoes for this.

Rotary weight sounding.

Test results.


CPTU (Cone Penetration Test with pore pressure measurements).





Clean water. The clay and sand look grey here.



The area is very much close to the Trondheimsfjord. Some decades ago, a Dutch company pumped up material (mainly sand) from the sea to connect the former island with the mainland. To be able to level the newly won land, a dam out of rocks was built.
Now, the aim of the field investigations is to find out how this material and also the original mass (incudes a lot of clay) below it is structured (homo-/ heterogeous,...) and how firm it is.