Girl meets Swedes

SKF Ball Bearings

Today was a very busy day filled with so many great memories! We started off the morning by going to SKF Ball Bearings. We met with Lars Werner who has been working at the company for years and works in the process development sector. He was very enthusiastic and gave us a very interesting lecture and tour on SKF and all that is does. SKF stands for Swedish Ball Bearing Company and that is what it is known for. It was founded in 1907 and started off as a ball bearing company, but is now more of a knowledge engineering company. They make a variety of sizes of ball bearings for a wide variety of equipment. All the way from small dentistry tools to large factory machines. 

SKF Tour

This company really tries to work with ideas that won't harm the environment because they try to stay as green as possible with all of their work. The ball bearings that they produce are so practical and efficient because they can handle misalignments while still spinning. There are two types of bearings; plain bearings and roller bearings. The plain bearings are the ball bearings and they are for fast moving things. The roller bearings are like a cylinder and they are used for slower moving items. We toured the companies manufacturing plant which was very cool because they used robots for a couple of their processes! 

Quotes from SKF:

"Ball Bearings are the heart of any mechanical machine"

"Building efficiency instead of of factories" 

The Swedes

The rest of our day we spent at the University again talking with some of the Swedish students. This was the best time of the day because we got to talk freely with the Swedish students and learn more about their life and schooling. The schooling here is all free, but is really paid for in tax money. Swedes also start college at a much later age than we do in the United States so they have more time to mature and figure out what they really want to do in their life. I learned that Swedish people are naturally very modest and do not like to brag under any circumstances. This is basically the complete opposite of Americans because we always seem to be looking for a reason to brag about themselves and their friends. A very interesting fact I learned was that they have to pay about $2,000 for their drivers license.  That seems crazy to me because we pay a very small amount for ours and their charge is very extreme. The Swedish students were very welcoming and open to any questions we had. We talked for a couple of hours with them and had an absolute blast! I was told that I was the only one from our group that sounded different, like I was from another country. One of the Swedish students asked where I was from because I had a different accent from the others! I don't know why, but they all thought that I sounded strange and that was shocking but very funny at the same time! 

Daily Reflections:

• Swedish people look so much younger than they actually are
• they get a lot less homework than we do in the states
• they are all so easy to talk to and very helpful