Wires Anyone?

Back in the good ol' days (okay, fine, high school wasn't that good but the electronics lab was), we had a beautiful work station. It had an oscilloscope right in front of us, wire cutters and strippers for everyone, components sorted into little boxes that were labeled, and lots of wire.

Nowadays, in the lab we work in for my electronics class (which is a great class besides the quality of the lab), there is one board per person that can do some pretty cool things. It has a section with switches to be used as inputs and a separate section with 9 LEDs for outputs. But there's no oscilloscope (not even a voltmeter) and the wires are pre-cut into two lengths.

Although I have kept in contact with my electronics teacher from high school, I refuse to send him a picture of any circuit I've built here. I believe that a page of math can be pretty in its own way. Likewise, a well made circuit can have its own beauty. People come by, see how each wire is carefully cut to fit the exact distance it needs to go and lay right against the circuit board, and are amazed at the effort put into the circuit. Here, my circuits are ugly. The wires, as a result of being pre-cut, tend to loop around and get tangled with each other. Some wires are two short and I have to daisy-chain them.

You might ask, well, you have to have learned something from this experience, right? Correct. I've learned that being able to cut your wires results in a much nicer circuit that is easier to de-bug. I've learned that some people (*cough* cs people taking an electronics lab class *cough*) haven't had experience with actual wires and thus don't understand how the holes on the breadboard and the wires relate to the lines they draw on their circuit-planning software. I've learned that hands-on experience is indeed valuable and that we should have more of it. Finally, I've learned that it's going to be harder to find good hands-on experience in classes here.

Looking at all those new realizations, I have to conclude that (amazingly) some teachers were right about the need to look for design teams and other ways to get real experience outside the classroom. Of course, I still think the labs that parallel the class should just be made better so these experiences are easier to get. After all, how much does wire cost?

Scientific Success, Engineering Failure

While we were discussing “Packing for Mars” by Mary Roach, our discussion leader brought up the observation that every time a shuttle would successfully launch the commentators would talk about how it was a great “success for science.” Conversely, he continued, every time there was some kind of failure – perhaps the tiles on the shuttle not holding up – the commentators would talk about how it was an “engineering failure.” Well, especially to an engineer, this seems rather unfair. Not that we necessarily want scientists to have failures as well, but can’t we ever talk about an engineering success?

           

Yes, I understand that it probably was the engineers’ fault that the tiles were poorly designed. After all, a scientist was unlikely in charge of such an applicable operation. But, when the tiles were perfect, shouldn’t the engineer have received some credit?

When I walk into my room and flip the light switch, I rarely think “wow, those lights work perfectly. Some engineer did a great job.” Or, when the road is clear I don’t think “What a great design – the pavement is so smooth and there aren’t any potholes.” Thing is, these are expected. I only really pay much attention to the functioning of the lights when they aren’t. When engineers are given a task they can either do what is expected or fail. And “meeting expectations” (C work for most classes) is rarely something people celebrate. Of course, sometimes an engineer can go above and beyond and do something extraordinary but such a case is not as common.

To make matters worse in the case of the space shuttle, the tiles were such a small part of an huge system. They weren’t meant to be flashy. They weren’t meant to catch people’s attention and make people think “oh my, look at those amazing tiles! How innovative!” Rather, they were meant to get a job done. And so, the engineering work for the most part went unnoticed and the accomplishment was attributed to science because the engineering made the advancement of science possible.

All the same, when people watch clips of a space shuttle launching, they probably aren’t thinking about that study on moon dust. It’s much more likely that they are awed at the power and engineering prowess on display. Of course, they probably aren’t attributing this to years of work on every aspect of the design.

Although engineering work is for a large part behind the scenes, every once in a while, it is nice to stop and appreciate those lights, that paved road, and those tiles on the space shuttle.