He Used to Be an Engineer

August 23, 2012

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I have a friend named, “Marc”. That is not his real name, but to keep him from scorn and abuse from engineers, I have decided to protect his identity.

Marc used to be an engineer. Yes, he went to school for engineering, got a job as an engineer, and worked for a number of years designing buildings and the systems that go into them. But, then something happened. Did he die? No. Did he suffer some horrible accident? No. Did he develop amnesia after being poisoned from eating those little humidity control packets in electronic packages, the packets that clearly say, “Do not eat!”? If it were only that easy to figure out.

Marc turned away from engineering and became…. I even hate to mention it…. he became…. he left engineering to…..  he decided to change careers and…

OK, he became an architect! An architect! In the engineering circles in which I travel, we call that being a traitor, a turncoat. Marc says he is still an engineer, but I remind him that his is not. And here is the reason. Engineers are practical, pragmatic, and sensible. Architects are always figuring out how to make things “look” better. They are all into the feel and ambiance of a building or other structure. Hopefully, you will see (and I am sure any engineer reading this would see) that the two cannot live together in peace. I was half-way through a writing a letter to his college explaining to them why they should take Marc’s engineering degree back, when I stopped and realized that he was actually a friend of mine and that loyalty should count for something. I never finished the letter. But now I am wondering whether I am going as soft in the head as he has in taking this rather artsy approach to life, being an architect.

What If…

August 9, 2012

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My son thinks up these impossible what if questions. They are impossible. I pay him no mind.

In the Olympics, athletes compete against each other in the same events. But, as an engineer, always trying to improve things, I get thinking sometimes about improvements we could make to the various sports. Can we combine running with swimming and bicycling? They already have it – the triathlon.

OK. How about this. Let’s race a human – an Olympic athlete – against a bicyclist and against a horse. If they were going the same distance, that would obviously be unfair. But if we take the average speed of a human for, say, 1000 meters, then take the time of that run and set the horse and bicyclist out at the distance that their average speed would take them in the same amount of time, then we could race the human running, the horse galloping, and bicyclist cycling. It would all be done with rates of speed, precise distances, and timing to the hundredth of a second. It sounds a bit odd, but it would give the engineer calculations to perform and distances to lay out. He could write up a report on it and submit it to…

All right. It has been done. When I was a kid, my parents, uncharacteristically took all their children to the horse races. It was family day and my dad, a math teacher who understood odds, only bet on the favorite horse to show. We came out 2 or 3 dollars ahead for the evening.

One of the events that headlined the night was a race between – you guessed it – an Olympic champion runner, a bicyclist, and a horse. The Olympic champion was Dave Wottle. In 1972, he won gold, not in his premier event, the 1500m, but in the 800m. Look up the story. It is interesting to read.

So, they placed Dave one distance from a common finish line, the bicyclist further out, and the horse around the curve somewhere. The horse ran valiantly, the bicyclist fell, I think breaking his bike, and embarrassingly landing in some, shall we say, fertilizer. But Dave Wottle won.

A marketer was no doubt behind it, and made sure Dave would win. People liked him. Engineers, code of ethics and all, were likely not to have been consulted. But the engineer could run the numbers, for this race and many like it, making them fair races and using any number of combinations for competitions.

The benefit engineers could have to society if they would only let us stray from providing clean water, electricity, engines, fuel, transportation, wastewater treatment, etc., and provide entertainment for all.

Pi Estimation Day

July 26, 2012

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Last Sunday, July 22, was Pi Estimation Day.

The weekend of celebration started with some tension on Saturday when a friend of mine, we will call him “Wes”, texted me and wished me an early “Happy Pi Day”. As an engineer, technically wrong terms need corrected (it’s concrete, NOT cement). So I texted back and said that the next day was actually Pi Estimation Day and March 14 is Pi Day. Yes, I realize that 22/7 = ~3.14286 and that pi = ~3.14159 and that March 14, represented by 3.14, is 0.00159 from pi and 22/7 is 0.00127 from pi, which is less, which he pointed out in a feeble attempt to defend himself. I, of course, explained that if one considers significant digits, which is always a good engineering consideration, then I was correct. Wes and I have heated debates at times.

Well, Wes, cornered, resorted to what I called out to be ultra-extrapolated logic. Wes is a pharmacist. When meeting people, he likes to say he is a Doctor, to which I always have to add “of Pharmacy”. He said that if dosing to mcg or ngs, then he needs significant digits. But I pointed out that he never uses pi in dosing, to which he responded that if he were dosing for Humpty Dumpty, well –  you can see that my engineering logic outdid his pharmacological mind and pushed him beyond logic.

I may have accepted the first arguments from my brother, the math professor, but a pharmacist (even if he is a Doctor)?

The engineer wins again.

Clean Water

July 19, 2012

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A month or two ago, we focused on Tork, prehistoric engineer. This week, we will look in on descendant, Torkus, who lived around the turn of the first millennium. We call him Torkus, Medieval Engineer.

In the time of Torkus, even though people did not understand germ theory and the various ways diseases could be transmitted, they did have a sense that clearer water was better for people than rancid water. Torkus, the most respected engineer of his day (because he was the only one around) understood that water needed to be somehow “cleaned”. He called this act “water treatment” and devised various methods to filter the water using different membranes, layers of materials, etc. Torkus didn’t get into chemical treatment, but the water he produced was generally clean and free of most harmful diseases. But providing this service to society proved more difficult.

Torkus went to the warlords who controlled the region at the time and tried to convince them of the benefit of water treatment. They considered him a crazed lunatic, then flogged him, hit him with sticks, and smashed his abacus. That last bit of torture was the cruelest to Torkus. But, he enjoyed a relatively healthy life after that, while most of the ruling warlords died of battle wounds and pestilence.

Clean water – a service provided by engineers. Torkus was ahead of his time.

The Engineer – Identified

July 12, 2012

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In understanding some of the most basic characteristics of the engineer, I offer this story:

My wife dropped our son off at a friend’s house one day. We had never met the parents, and after sending our son to the back yard where the friends were gathering, my wife returned and informed me that she still had not met the parents. They were there. The mother was inside getting things ready for a birthday party, and the dad was out front, standing off to the side, under a tree, and making no attempt to meet or greet the parents of the arriving kids. My wife said she kind of waved and tried to say, “Hi,” but the dad just stood there, saying nothing and doing nothing in this forced social setting. I then explained what was going on, for I recognized the signs. The dad of that family was undoubtedly an engineer.

He could not have been a lawyer, unlikely a doctor, definitely not a rodeo clown. His social skills were simply not developed. While not all engineers are like this, most definitely have an aversion to meeting new people, especially ones that may want to talk.

And although my wife was skeptical at my detective skills, when I picked up my son a few hours later, I confirmed that the dad was indeed an engineer.

No AC, No Problem

June 28, 2012

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I met an engineer whose wife told me he was frugal. She said cheap; I interpret.  Her example is that when they were first married, he drove a very old Volvo. Why spend the money on a new car? Unfortunately, the air conditioning didn’t work anymore. It could have been anything from needing a recharge to needing replaced, but that didn’t matter. What mattered is that it cost money and time to even have someone look at the AC, a system that is not an essential characteristic of a vehicle.  The car will get you where you need to be – the function of the vehicle – without the air conditioning in working order.

The problem was multiplied by the fact that he had to park the car outside both at home and at work – in the sun, in the summer, in a southern state. This did not faze him, for he engineered a wonderful solution. To keep it in the shade and therefore, cool enough to drive, he cut out a piece of plywood approximately in the shape of the car as seen from a bird’s eye view, and lashed it to the car while parked. I am certain that he figured out a way to fold up the plywood with hinges in order to fit it in the car so that he could transport it from home to work and back again. This went well beyond those simple cardboard fold-ups for the windshield. This covered the entire car.  To that, I say with Spock, “Fascinating.”

Vacation Destination

June 21, 2012

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This may be a part 2, as I think I have discussed earlier how an engineer may view vacation spots differently than others. Sure, an engineer will appreciate a mountain, or ocean. An engineer may even enjoy a “fun” time at an amusement park as long as he doesn’t start doing calculations on the factor of safety that the various rides must have.

A few members of my family will visit the ocean side of California for vacation. The coastal highway, they say, is beautiful. The hills and wharf of San Francisco are fascinating, and there is the glamor of Hollywood as an intriguing cultural experience. Though we won’t go inland, parks like Yosemite beckon with their “grandeur”.

I asked in our planning sessions, “What engineering masterpiece turned 75 years old this month?” I had to supply the answer. The Golden Gate Bridge. Now, why, I ask, would anyone want to hike up a mountain or along the beach, when that person could just as easily see, and then actually walk right across one of the great engineering feats of the last century.

I discussed this with the family. Walk across a bridge? The first reaction may have been restrained interest, or possibly boredom. I have a hard time distinguishing between the two. But after a detailed and careful explanation of the brilliance of the work, and the fact that we could hike it in the same year it turns 75, they were either very excited to walk the Golden Gate Bridge, or they needed to use the restroom. I also have a difficult time telling the difference between those two.

The Golden Gate Bridge wins out.

An Update on the Scientific Calculator

June 14, 2012

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A couple weeks ago I shared talked about a neighbor kid stopping by to borrow a scientific calculator for a science final exam. I didn’t have to get one of my kids’ calculators, but, of course, had one on hand to lend him.

So, he brings it back and, unfortunately, I wasn’t here. He left it with my wife or one of my kids. I have it now. But, what I don’t have is information. How did he do on his science final? Did the calculator help? What equations did he use? What functions did he use? Did he use the calculator later to determine the gas mileage of the family car, or figure out the area of their irregular yard, or to help him derive an equation that will determine how much pizza to order with his friends if a number of them go out to eat together and want to order different sized pizzas and he determined the square inches for different combinations of pizza sizes and compared them to the number of people times the average number of square inches of pizza each person would eat? Did he run the calculations of the height-to-weight ratio of all his family members? Did he calculate the angle of trajectory to throw a baseball to optimize the opportunity of hitting the window of the neighbor nobody likes?

If it weren’t for the fact that most engineers don’t like to, want to, or are the least willing to talk that much, they would be asking all those, too. Most engineers would probably just say, “Hey, the calculator do OK?” which sums up all the above questions.

A lent calculator can be a wonderful conversation starter.

Mowing the Lawn

June 7, 2012

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A nonengineer (NE) wife of an engineer told me about when they were first married. She wanted to help out with the home, even doing some things which she typically would not do. In this case, she mowed the lawn. Her thinking was that this would ease his stress from work, show her husband how she was willing to pitch in, and emphasize the teamwork that any marriage would want. But instead of a compliment or showered with appreciation, when her engineer husband came home, he pointed out that she had mowed the lawn – in the wrong pattern. This week, it was supposed to be in diagonal passes. If that didn’t dig him into a hole deep enough, he re-mowed the lawn – THAT NIGHT.

The NE wife has never mowed the lawn since.

True story.

The Availability of a Scientific Calculator

May 31, 2012

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Just a couple days ago, a neighbor kid stopped by and explained that he had a final in some advanced high school science class and his scientific calculator went missing. Would we have one he could borrow?

I do realize that most people may ask their own kids if they had one, if they were using it, if it was OK for a neighbor to borrow their calculator. But, I am an engineer. I was able to quickly find one of two or three scientific calculators of my own I have around the house – actually, one was in my backpack I carry around everywhere – and lend it to him.

As an engineer, I think it only natural that people would have a calculator of their own. It helps with balancing checkbooks and stuff like that. But if a person wanted to figure out the angle of roof, or the surface area of an irregular object like an alien spaceship, or might just want to know the cube root of a number like 845, then a scientific calculator would be very helpful. I don’t see how anyone makes it through life without a scientific calculator. The least you can do with it is lend it to a neighbor kid.

btw – The cube root of 845 is 9.454, rounded to the nearest thousandth.

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