It All Starts at an Early Age

March 15, 2012

engineeringdaze Thursday - Stories Leave a comment

When is a person an engineer? Officially, a PE license helps. Educationally, a BS in engineering will do. But, an engineer is frequently an engineer beginning at a young age. Make that a very young age.

I recently got talking to the wife of an engineer in the town I live. She said that when he was very young, under 10, I believe, he loved to take things apart and put them back together, but especially put things back together. He was going to be an engineer, whether he knew the the term or not.

His grandmother used to prepare for his visits by taking apart various things around the house – lamps, furniture, kitchen appliances – and “ask” him to help by putting them back together. It may have been when he was in his 30’s or 40’s when he finally found out that those things didn’t just fall apart by themselves, or his grandmother didn’t take them apart because they weren’t working, but she actually saw the engineer in him at that early age, and, well, encouraged it.

His wife said that he still puts things back together, but that she doesn’t take them apart for him. He has to do that himself. And he does.

You Might Be an Engineer If…

March 14, 2012

engineeringdaze Wednesday - You Might Be an Engineer If... 1 Comment

– you’ve ever sketched out a graph on a scrap of paper or napkin in order to prove a perfectly logical point to your spouse, or a total stranger, only to receive a blank stare.

3600

March 13, 2012

engineeringdaze Tuesday - Numbers Leave a comment

What is so interesting to an engineer about 3600? Well, here’s the explanation. When an engineer goes on a trip, especially with the family, he does not want to be listening to what his kids call music, or what his wife calls conversation. Not when a road trip presents so many wonderful opportunities for calculations to be done – What mpg is the car getting? What is our average speed, even considering stops? What is our ETA?

3600 starts them all. The first thing to do is check to see if the speedometer is giving us the proper reading. Assuming you are on an interstate, lock in the cruise control, then measure the seconds between mile markers. And, here is the tricky part, divide that number of seconds into 3600. This yields the mph you are going. Then compare this to the speedometer. You can try this for different speeds – 60, 65, 70, etc. If there are differences, the family can discuss whether this is because the speedometer is actually off, or if the tires may be under-inflated, or other reasons.

So, put away the Disney DVDs, get out a stopwatch and calculator (or use your smart phone), and really enjoy the drive.

Use the number 3600. The engineer in the family will appreciate it.

(For a whole lot of fun, convert it to metric!)

The Pizza Equation

March 12, 2012

engineeringdaze Monday - Equations, Charts, Graphs... Leave a comment

A friend of mine who is an engineer asked his wife, a  non-engineer (NE), to join him and the other engineers in his office for a pizza lunch.  Upon her arrival, she apologized to the group by saying she was sorry if her presence meant less pizza for everyone.

“That’s OK,” they said.  “We already factored you into our pizza equation.”  Sure enough they had an equation for calculating the amount of pizza to order.  It was something like:

PA = Pm*ym + Pw*yw

Where,

PA = Area of pizza needed, in square inches

Pm = Average area of pizza eaten by a man, in2

ym = Number of men

Pw = Average area of pizza eaten by a woman, in2

yw = Number of women

The values Pm and Pw acknowledge, without casting aspersions at either gender, that men, on average, eat more than women.  Also, the values can be updated for the population group if continuing observational analysis warrants it. They kept track of Pm and Pw, simplified the equation and developed a table for the areas of the different sizes of pizzas, optimizing for cost, of course.

As for implementation, it is likely that at least one of the engineers in the group had already coded the equation in Fortran or in an Excel spreadsheet in order to automate this mundane task.

As engineers, we ask: What could be more logical?

(Note: A sharp-minded engineer will point out that the engineers in this example have already made a huge concession to the NE world by doing all the calculations in the English system.)

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