Is Engineering Becoming Too Abstract?

Excellent response, I could not have said it better.

And then, the busy forms created by the IT suits to report field findings and conclusions on, oh my, don't get me started.

I believe they were co-created by insurance companies to down play marginal and rejectable findings.

I'm sorry you can't just say that...
You have to fill in the appropriate customer feed back questionaire..

Del

GA. - The theoretical part of engineering has it's place when trying to define expected results for example in rocket design and machine design, but it is severely limited. If an "engineer" doesn't have good hands on experience, he generally doesn't know what to expect once he makes the calculations anyway.

Have you ever noticed that a majority of those engineers that moved up into administration were never very good engineers anyway, but had the ability to BS their way with management who were untrained. Often they give erroneous answers that lead projects in entirely the wrong direction. I've only known 3 exceptional engineers in administration who were both good at engineers and good administarors. In all cases, they were hands on men.

Computer says no....
Del

Yes.

milo

Who you calling old?

I agree. . . . absolutely!

Apparently the chief engineer where I play feels the same way. At my intervue he volunteered how pleased he was to bring someone on board who knows the top end 3D modeling software, knows how to design and has a variety of fabrication skills.

"It will be novel to have someone here who can create designs that can actually be made!"

I am a firm believer in the power of "intuitive knowing". It comes from time, experience and a willingness to get your hands dirty.

I grew up tinkering. Nothing was safe from my curiosity. If it had physical presence I was into it with whatever tools were ay hand. No engine, gearbox, radio, TV, toaster, blender, carburetor, motor, etc was safe.

Todays youngsters don't have anything beyond their virtual games, Nintendos and their cell phones. Most can't pick up a nail and a hammer without injuring themselves.

I spend as much time in the fabrication shops here at the lab as I do at my workstation. I love it and wouldn't have it any other way!

What's more. . . when I get home, I do more of the same.

Do I still have passion after 50 years of this? What do you think?

L.J.

You are what you are! And Your passion is showing.

True story: Walt Disney World wanted to find out how to hire better employees. especially in housekeeping dept. So they mined ther records to find out who their "Best Housekeeper" was. They interviewed her looked at her background etc. nothing stood out. They were frustrated. FInally one of the interviewers abandoned the questionaire and asked the lady out right, :what do you like to do when you get off work and go home."

The "Best Housekeeper's reply: " Why, I go home and clean my house."

I picked this up during a behind the scenes at Disney tour we had several years ago.

And BTW, Behind the scenes at Disney is just as tidy as the real scenes at Disney.

milo

My son, now 33, opted to become an electronics technician because like his old man, he wanted the hands-on experience. He is able to troubleshoot faults in military avionics systems quicker than the high priced engineering tech reps who built the aircraft. He has been called upon to fix problems while airborne in a C-130. For his skills, he has been awarded commendations by his Air Force superiors. If he became an engineer, I doubt that he would be satisfied. This is a little off on a tangent, but I think it answers indirectly the question of "abstract engineering".

I learned to design and build boats the old fashioned way. With drafting paper, pencils, and a steady supply of erasers. Volumemetrics and stability curves were worked out on a slide rule, then a hand held programmable calculator. Later a 3D CAD program. A good set of shop tools, and some time spent racing sailboats (not attributable to your total time on earth) gave me a healthy perspective on inside out engineering.

The trouble became evident when I started receiving plans from tyros who had just bought the latest 3D CAD program, with all the bells and whistles. Not a clue had they that their design was at best impractical, or at worst dangerous. It looked good on the printout, The hell with the stability curves, worry about the rig later, and stuff whatever you can inside to make it look like your living room. Then throw a hissy fit when I pointed out that their design was likely to turn turtle or broach anywhere outside the breakwater.

It's too easy to get stupid these days.

"It's too easy to get stupid these days"

Yes and like Forest Gump said "Stupid is as stupid does"

I've 27 years using CAD. Started with VersaCAD, then AutoCAD, Then Anvil, then CADKEY, then Pro E, now Solidworks.

After all these years, one of my mentors (and you too) is still right: Cad software allows good designers to develop good designs faster. Cad software also allows bad designers to develop bad designs faster.

Mastery requires many things before it shows up, regardlss of the discipline. The best tools of self expression won't compensate for lack of mastery.

L.J.

Hello.......?

When you go to Engineering school you learn the very basic. Continuing to learn 'on the job'.

Although 'electronics' in the form of measurement and computer, CAD etc, seems to me to get in the way of seeing the detail.

Reading off an electronic number, cannot give the same idea of scale as running out a tape and working from a Datum.

Of course, it all depends on the type of Engineering you choose to work in.

Where the engineers were out most of the time (on a building site) 20 years ago, I do not see that now. Most of the methods are 'automatic' and it is hard to follow things through to the finish.

In one word............YES!

bb

Fascinating discussion.

From the educational perspective...I was a hands-on tinkerer and went into math and physics when I saw its value. I was building a go cart in ag-mechanics (not sure why the ag teach approved the project, but we used our skills) I used the Trig I learned in my physics class to configure the angles for cutting (it went together beautifully, everyone was impressed)... While studying math and physics I was overwhelmed with the cook-book approach. All along I was thinking, "why don't they give us a situation and show how the math applies?"

Working with engineering students in Freshman physics labs, I found that they were being taught the tools, but not how to use them. Needless to say, it made for interesting discussions.

Here is an element to throw into the discussion...Perhaps Engineering education is very much like it has always been, but the students have lost the practical experience that should have been gained in their youth (working on their bike, car, motorcycle, building tree houses, helping dad fix stuff, etc.)

I had a rude awakening a few years ago. I put together a lab for my freshman high-school. At one point in the lab, the students were required to use a screw driver. Almost all of my students had no idea how to use a screwdriver!

Education now has to take up the slack and provide the practical experience.

Good point about hands on, I bet a lot of us grew up in our Dad's or Granddad's garage or tinkered under the shade tree.

I love the word tinker and wish I could sell my skills as a tinkerer.

Some of us are trying to share our love of just tinkering with mechanical and electrical things by donating time and materials to Vo Tech Schools.

I wish more of us would do it.

Wow...I haven't heard the term "Vo Tech" used in some time. In my area they are all refered to as community colleges as not to dampen anyone's self esteem. Along with the name change the tinkering type skills are being dropped in favor of button pushing. One local school dropped their machinest program but now offers the exciting opportunity for an associates of applied science in CNC Operator! I'm sorry but the best CNC still needs a qualified machinest to get the most out of it. You still need that artistry of the machinest. Same goes for engineers. Our new young BSME's fresh out of school can operate the heck out of our 3D modeling program. However, when you tell them to make a 2D print for the shop floor, and they don't know the difference between a weld and surface finish symbol, you have trouble.

Yes, engineers do need math and science skills. However, we must not lose sight of the manual arts skills, it is of equal importance. We to are supporting local high schools implementation of "Project Lead The Way" as well as donating time to the local Vo Tech School.

Hail to the Tinkerers

An additional data point :

http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/107149/the-hardest-jobs-to-fill-in-america?mod=career-leadership

milo

Yes, I seen that earlier and I was a bit surprised it would even be acknowledged.

Hi Milo,

Good stuff as usual.

ThougH anything Manpower has to say needs to be taken w/a very large grain of salt. Their idea of pay for say a experienced machinest in a job shop [I saw the posting 2 months ago] would be $12-$15/hr DOE. on the food chain of "employment agencies" they would be somewhere around plankton...

Plankton is what takes up the raw nitrogenous wastes directly after excretion as I recall.

milo

OK, so I was being generous

Yep, even though the CC's came around and offered the associate degrees, PA still has a High school Vo-Tech system, 1/2 day academic and 1/2 day Technical.

I still sit in on an occasional Adult Education class during the winter.

Depends of course in what line of engineering you are in.

before i worked in a LCD company who made small panels, there was always lots of hands on work for the first samples or prototypes, making preliminary test tooling, measuring and so on.

but know i work at a LCD probe machinery firm, and then testing can only done on the fully assembled machine. so it has become a lot more abstract

I first learned of the Odd Man Theory from the late Michael Crighton in his premier book "Andromeda Strain"

What it points to is the need to have a someone trained outside the conventional paradigms of analytical thought; a someone who is more likely to think "out of the box" and thus more likely to find the novel solution than others who are stuck in the same patterns.

My use of tools, all tools, came as a function of my eclectic and diverse background of experience that is so diverse that at times, it even surprises me. My ability to develop unusual solutions is a consequence of following the counsel of Joseph Campbell who urges us to "Follow your bliss"

Doing so can be viewed as undisciplined by others but I notice too that those who are critical and who must exercise such discipline, hate their jobs and can hardly wait to retire.

My experience has been that the best, most effective solutions are often the simplist. Even the most abstract ideas eventually wind up working because of some guy on the shop floor. Usually, he's some grey haired craftsman with less than a high school education and 40 years of dirt-under-the nails standing in front of an old Bridgeport that finds the solutions that makes the abstract work.

We need both. The arguments you articulated are the best I've seen.

Thanks

L.J.

Some of you offer the sour grapes I heard in junior high and high school, "you may be book smart, but you ain't street smart!" It's a cliche. Engineering without a basis of mathematics is unsafe or wasteful. Somewhere in between is the ideal solution. Many products need some artistry as well, for aesthetics, for comfort, and to fit in with the surrounding environment. Once a graduated student starts working, they're likely done with the mathematical education. So it is prudent to give that student enough depth that they can reasonably pursue a job with NASA, Toyota, or Joe's Feeder Bowl Fabrication. Much is likely to be wasted, but the alternative is for education to fall short of the more taxing requirements, and then who is going to do that work? Who is going to figure out how to shave another 2 kg off the 2012 Suzuki GSX-R, or gain another 1.5 mpg from the Ford F-150? Who will design the next Brooklyn or Golden Gate Bridge? Hoover Dam? There's no room for someone whinging "it's too hard!" You know, I only have a BSMET, but I would never argue engineering is too abstract. Yes, engineering schools should offer more hands-on labs, but that's why many offer both engineering and engineering tech. Like it or not, there will always be a percentage of highly intelligent people that need a vocation and something to occupy those excess brain cycles. There are millions outside western culture happy to fill those roles until Americans are all just distribution packer/shippers and retail workers. How's $8/hour sound to you?

GA to ya on that!

All of these things get done daily around the world, just go down to a farm, check out the backyards & garages of the "uneducated", and the old greybeard on the shop-floor!

Geniuses all, who didn't want the prestige of a degree or the wasted time trying to get one.

Most great ideas throughout history have originated with the tinkerer.

Give me one of these guys any day over a bevy of theoretical statisticians or what ever best describes the theory guy.

Mittal, one of the richest men in the world started out by scavenging cans in India 40 years or so ago, but he is a Genius, would guest have done that to better himself and society?

GA, Del -- "Maths is a tool which aids engineering...not the otherway around."

I think you have articulated a very important concept. I especially like the plural for "maths". I suppose it's a uniquely British colloquialism; but instructive for this purpose.

There are lots of different mathematical tools (maths as you call them) some more generally useful than others. To me the great value of mathematical tools is that they are predictive in that they enable us to close in on the best solution more rapidly than the method of the pure artisan who starting with a knowledge of prior art creates a new variant or synthesis and tests it. To the extent that computation and measurement using math makes this process proceed faster those tools are useful.

But the engineer needs more than tools. He/she needs "material". That is where the "art" of engineering comes in. It is more than just the right words for an internet search engine.

WARNING; semi-OT rant coming ........

I suppose the day will come when we can design a boomerang entirely with mathematical models built on the laws of basic physics without any reference to thousands of years of boomerang "art". Then we can tailor BBS (Bachelor's in Boomerang Science) university programs which will be a rigorous 4 year tests to find the brightest intellects for our public and private enterprises (you know, the ones that are "too big to fail") to train for technical leadership. Since these institutions will only select the top 10 or 20 percent of graduates the rest will be cast adrift to sink or swim in a world that has all the boomerangs it can possibly use.

Of course this is absurd; but it is not far off what our engineering schools are doing now in their zeal to maintain accreditation and keep their tenured professors busy. And keep the flow of MS_E's and BS_E's flowing to meet the demand of the big corporations, etc. for high IQ and moldable trainees when what is really needed are more BSET's. Now ther latest engineering school gimmick is the "Senior Project". After 3-1/2 years of theory and increasingly obsolescent math training they go build something so they appear to have some "hands on" knowledge and skills.

Please -- More training in the "art of technology" and the spectrum of the marketplace and less in the engineer's tools. We are too fast losing this art and the "tools" are evolving too rapidly. What most of our working engineers need is understanding of the scientific theory and a firmly grounded belief in the efficacy of the mathematics underlying it. The ability to rigorously proceed through all the underlying mathematical equations wastes too much time for all that is needed. Leave all the higher math to the few specialists who have the formidable intellectual resources to design the computer tools the rest of the engineers will use.

END RANT.

Thanks for your patience with me.......Ed Weldon

Concepts are what is important. Sketches on paper napkins have been the medium for more coffee-break engineering than all the others I've seen, combined. And, if it's too complex for a paper napkin, doing it in a 3D solid modeler won't make things any clearer.

At no time in the last 50 years of sketching, have I ever seen a new idea dimensioned, nor was it felt necessary. The KISS principle is the rule when articulating abstractions.

And when it gets built, it will be cutting, shaping, welding etc that will bring it to life. At that stage, it had damned well better cease being absract!

L.J.