Gift-giving for engineers
A male engineer I once worked with told me that, when he got married, he told his wife that he didn’t pick up on hints. If she wanted something for her birthday, she would hand him a magazine, point to a picture, and say, “I want this for my birthday.” I’ve personally used a similar approach after a couple of events where my husband said, “I wanted to get you something, but I didn’t know what you wanted.” If I see something I like, I may send an email to him saying, “If you’re thinking about birthday gifts, you can put this on your list.” Sometimes I’m more subtle, like when we walk into Barnes and Noble and I make a comment about how it sure would be nice to have a Nook or Kindle…and then proceed to play with the demo model for a half-hour and ask the salesperson…
The Spinning Engineer
Welcome back! I’m thrilled to be officially joining as a full-time author. I hope everyone had a chance to relax a bit over the holidays, and maybe spend a little bit of time on your favorite hobbies. This fall, one of my lab mates introduced my husband and me to a new hobby : spinning. No, not the exercise class, the yarn-making type. While we started with drop spindles, being the gadget-y people we are, spinning wheels were instantly fascinating. When we talk to spinners, they have regularly commented on how engineers take a very different approach to the whole process. Most spinners do it by feel, and trial and error, instead of evaluating everything in terms of gear ratios and frictional forces. The spinning wheel is hardly a new invention, and operates on fundamentally simple principles. Twist is introduced into the fiber based on the treadle rate, and the…
The engineer in the kitchen
As today is Thanksgiving (in the US, anyway), it seemed appropriate to talk about my favorite kind of engineering: food engineering…more commonly referred to as cooking. I guess you could call it that, but I take my cooking far too seriously to do something like slap some bread in the toaster and claim I just cooked something. Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday because I love to cook. (Washing dishes is a different story, and my husband has been officially designated as chief dish-cleaning engineer.) Since I reached adulthood, I’ve been searching for the perfect combination of dishes for Thanksgiving. Of course, even the perfect dish takes time to perfect. So how you develop the perfect Thanksgiving meal? I think that’s going to change from person to person, so rather than giving you a list of recipes, I’m going to talk a little bit about some of the other things…
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…