Learning to be a civil engineer means that I must know about infrastructure.

That means i must know about roads.

To design a road, i must know how the road in question will be used. Knowing how many vehicles will be traveling on that particular road, in what direction, etc. etc. lets me choose the type, gradation of rocks to be used; the grade of the bitumen to be mixed, and how much to be mixed.

If i have a slightly twisted sense of honour, i can metaphorically pave a road with gold and silver, as various MCD engineers have been doing -- and have been publicised/caught doing so. (Roughly speaking, the number of faults in the road is directly proportional to the net worth -- black and white -- of the engineer who designed it.) But all this is mere digression.

One of the experiments we do is use a speed gun to measure the velocities of various vehicles passing a particular road, and to tabulate and analyse the data according to the type, speed of vehicles and the lane used by them.

Incidentally, the speed guns we were given looked exactly like a common Handycam / video recorder. A group of students youngsters standing by the roadside, speed-gun handy-cam in hand mean that you have an extremely interesting transportation social experiment to perform.

The reactions of the motorists to our motely group - noting down readings, and also acting as if we were taking close-ups of the passing bikes probably skewed our readings a bit. Most bikes slowed down a little to ensure that we got their best side (not that the guys on the bikes had any), a few spread their hands (look Mommy -- no hands; no feet; no teeth).

A piece of advice, dear readers. Next time you want to behave like a performing monkey on noticing a camera in the vicinity, do ensure that it is a camera.