You are browsing the archive for June 2011.
We’re always trying to eke out more power from less. All the talk about green design and sustainability is really a way in which we can live our lives and power our machines using fewer resources: not just because it’s environmentally friendly but because it’s cheap as well. Compressors play a large role in making our machines more efficient and more powerful. Thermodynamically a compressor is the same thing as a pump only a compressor works on gas or vapor and a pump operates on liquid but both typically increase the pressure of the working fluid. The pump may be increasing the pressure to increase flow but the compressor might be making a vapor more dense for its next stage in the process. The most common compressors are axial flow and centrifugal types. In an engine, a compressor is usually housed in a turbocharger where the purpose is to increase [...]
Paul’s entry yesterday about an engineering competition he’s judging brought back memories of my experiences competing on our high school’s engineering team. We participated in a competition called JETS, which basically involved showing up to a place with a bunch of other teams and solving various engineering problems – from all types of engineering. In particular, I remember my team delegating problems. After spending some time working on my problem, I said I was clueless. One of my team mates scowled at me and said, “Try to figure it out using the units!” This was my first (in)formal introduction to the concept of dimensional analysis. Until I got to college, I don’t remember too many of my teachers stressing the importance of units when solving problems. I don’t think I was alone as this was what caused me to have my worst group project ever. Once I got into college [...]
So those of you who have followed me on twitter (@profgears) may have noticed my excitement over submitting my first proposal. What started as a smaller, single PI proposal actually got absorbed by a much larger proposal with multiple universities involved. I’m actually pretty glad for that because I was totally unprepared for how to write a proposal and communicate at levels much higher and certainly out of my comfort zone. And now, it’s hurry up and wait for a few months before the reviews get back. I hate this part, as does probably everyone, but it a necessary evil. So, I thought I would jot down some thoughts while it’s still fresh in my memory and I will hopefully look back on this with some nostalgia when I’m an old, feeble, tenured prof. Overall, it’s not so bad – One of the bad things about this proposal ended up being [...]
For the next few weeks, I’m going to hog EngineerBlogs to talk about a school’s engineers competition that’s taking place. The contest is taking place at Anglia Ruskin University, which is in Chelmsford, England, the “birth place of radio”. The contest is run by Chelmsford Engineering Society, which is a group of engineers that run the competition in their own time and are sponsored by local businesses. Each year, schools from all around the area come to Chelmsford, displaying their projects and hoping to win one of the many donated prizes. My part in this is that I am one of the many judges that the local companies sponsor. My firm, embpapst, sends two judges each year as well as donates money to the society. It’s important for us and other companies to do this, otherwise, these contests just could not take place. The contest takes place on the 1st [...]
I wrote last week about Jim Williams passing away and how influential he was on the analog electronics community and myself. In a sad twist of fate, one of Jim’s friends and another hero of mine, Bob Pease, died in a car crash on the way home from Jim’s memorial service. Bob was driving his ’69 Beetle in the hills of Saratoga, CA when his car went off the road and struck a tree. When I found out that two analog legends are now gone, it really hurt. Obviously nothing like their close friends and families have felt, but instead a loss in the world because they meant so much to engineers. So this week’s theme is about mistakes? Well, it’s not my biggest, not by far, but my mistake is not asking Bob or Jim for an interview sooner. They were both at the top of the list of [...]
This week’s theme is our biggest mistake. I couldn’t boil it all down to a single moment but I know what’s been the problem in the past and what will finally get me in the future: my big mouth. It’s not that I talk a lot it’s that I’m not great about saying the right things. Especially to the right people. I have a tendency to talk to my coworkers the same as I talk to the big boss. And I’ve noticed the big boss doesn’t like that. My coworkers are, for the most part, accepting of my frankness and perhaps occasional sarcasm. I’ve had superiors as well as college professors turn on me in an instant when they think I’m not showing them the proper respect due to them. The problem is I’m not really good at kissing up. I don’t know what to say, it comes across as [...]
Making mistakes is easy, I do them all the time! However, what we do about them is more important. In this week’s theme of “mistakes,” I can easy spend time telling you about the mess I have gotten into and how I should have been more careful, but there’s nothing I can do about them. So I want to talk about keeping face after making mistakes. We all know that moment when your heart sinks, your skin turns cold and you start to sweat. Your first reaction is “Oh God What Have I Done!” and then you start to pray no one else has seen your massive mistake and your hoping you can run away and hide – no one will notice will they? It’s not your fault, it has to be someone else who fed you wrong information! Or some faulty device or the fault of the technician – [...]
This week at Engineer Blogs, we are discussing the worst mistake we’ve ever made. However, that theme is somewhat difficult for me as I am a perfect human being who has always been right, or at least argued my point successfully until my opponent has been convinced I am right. Actually, I’m completely joking and I have make more than my fair share of mistakes. However, I’m going to refrain from discussing them for political reasons. Instead, I thought I would discuss something that I’ll never know if it was a mistake until it’s too late: Skipping the postdoc stage of an academic career. First, some short background. Unlike many academic engineers, I did my UG and MSc at the same university and then moved on for my PhD at a different university. It seems like the norm is to do UG at one place and then move on for your [...]
This week’s theme is about the worst mistake we’ve made. I have a few doozies, but I think I’ll stick to one that caused me to break down and cry in front of my advisor…although the crying wasn’t great, either. I knew I was going to be finishing up my master’s and was trying to decide where to go for my doctorate. Unfortunately, I didn’t know if I was going to be accepted to any of the universities I’d applied to. I did know that my advisor was very willing to keep me on as a doctoral student. With this in mind, I decided to spend the last semester of my master’s program doing something very stupid: taking classes. As I’m prone to doing, I seriously underestimated how much time I would need to write my thesis, and thought I would be fine doing it alongside two classes (and an [...]
Jim Williams died a few days ago. Jim was an applications engineer for Linear Technology, a chip manufacturer that makes analog components. He was one of my favorite authors and engineers and someone I really looked up to. I loved reading his books and application notes, and I believe his leaving this world is a great loss for everyone. However, in examining what I know of his life, I feel I can learn a few things. First off, to call Jim anything less than an analog electronics expert would do his memory injustice. His clarity in writing and his ability to piece together clever circuits to show the capabilities of a new LT chip was unbelievable. And the reason he was able to so adeptly create circuits is his years of dedication to his craft. Not only was his job working with circuits, his pastime was repairing old analog Tektronix oscilloscopes. This [...]
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