Thankful for a Well-Stocked Bookshelf
So this week, we’re following a US Thanksgiving theme, about what we’re thankful for, or other Thanksgiving related topics. When I talk to physicists considering making the switch to engineering, one of the regular jokes is “Engineers don’t think they have to know everything. They just need to know where to look it up”. And so I’m thankful for my favorite place to look things up: my bookshelf. I’ve never sold back a textbook (and yes, I’m lucky to have been able to do so), and there are many I still refer to regularly. I’m also lucky that my family considers textbooks totally reasonable birthday/holiday presents, and so I have several books for classes I never took. Despite being a “digital native”, there are just certain things which are easier to find in a textbook. Looking for that one equation about crack growth, but can’t remember who it’s named after?…
Engineering Education Beyond the Classroom
Engineering education is something that gets discussed a lot around here, and around the web. However, most of these discussions focus on what can be done within the classroom context. There are just certain limits to what can be done with a group of 30-100 students at one time, and there are many economic reasons to keep large lecture classes around. When it comes to studying theory, this method can be highly effective. But what about application? Most students struggle with bridging the gap between theory and application. Lab classes can be one way of connecting the two, but these are often expensive in equipment and instructor time. I strongly feel that every engineering undergraduate needs to do at least one project outside of the classroom. Many schools have some sort of senior design program, but by then, it may be too late, as students have left engineering (the leaky…
Materials Genome Initiative
One of the big challenges of engineering is the time it takes to get from innovation to production. This year, President Obama announced the Materials Genome Initiative for Global Competitiveness, as a joint effort between industry, academia, and several major government agencies. Materials issues are considered critical both to national defense and energy policy. However, the time to get a brand new material from the lab bench to market tends to be measured in decades. This initiative aims to decrease that time by making foundational data more accessible. Accordingly, one of the major goals of the Material Genome Initiative is to create better open databases for materials information. In biology, with the rise of bioinformatics and data sharing requirements by funding agencies, there are some impressive databases, such as FlyBase and WormBase, each devoted to a particular organism. However, there are a number of challenges that arise when trying to share materials data. One…
Materials Science and Engineering: Because Everything is Made of Something
Hello! I’ve been a reader and commenter here on Engineer Blogs since my first timid steps into the blogosphere. I’m thrilled to be here as a guest blogger, and to represent my little corner of the engineering world: materials science and engineering. I generally find that most undergraduates are unaware of MSE unless required to take an intro course, which includes many mechanical and biomedical engineering students. Part of this is a matter of size; even the largest MSE departments are usually under 100 students per graduating class. It is also very typical that the class size grows dramatically between the 2nd and 3rd year, when students change majors or are finally forced to declare. Another reason has to do with job titles after graduation. Looking through the alum database from my undergraduate institution, job titles are more frequently Process Engineer, Product Engineer, R&D Engineer, or Quality Engineer. We don’t have the…