Professors worry that engineering students don't tinker enough...

From: CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com <(CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com)>
Date: Thu Dec 7 16:34:38 2000

>> When I was a grad student at Caltech I heard some professors offering
>> some similar worries as much as 10 years ago.... See the full article at

>I have often claimed that I am not an engineer. In one sense this most
>certainly false (in that I make 'engines' -- namely ingenious mecahnisms).
>In another sense it's certainly true -- my qualifications are in particle
>physics, not engineering.

In most of the US, putting "engineer" near your name doesn't require that
you hold an engineering certification. For instance, my official title
at my day job is "senior software engineer" but I've never taken a single
software nor engineering course, much less certification exam, in my life.

In other parts of the world, putting "engineer" near your name can only be
done if you've passed the required certifications.

>> But could they? Could a handful of engineering
>> majors, circa 2000, actually make a computer out of
>> assorted parts?

>I'd be interested to know what these 'parts' were. Motherboard/video
>card/disk drive/PSU? (in other words 'making a PC'). Microprocessor, RAM,
>EPROM, TTL glue? (making a microprocessor board, like manya of us have
>done many times)? Lots of simple gate and flip-flop chips, or FPGAs
>(making a processor at the gate level)?

Almost certainly motherboard/video card/disk drive/PSU in this context.

(I, too, was shocked in the early 90's to find a book called "Build your
own PC" and all it did was show you how to plug boards together.)

>Unfortunately, this seems to be the case in the UK as well. I've met
>engineering graduates who don't have a _clue_ about real-world
>electronics or mechanics. Show them a simple circuit board or a simple
>mechanism -- even something as simple as a striking clock -- and they
>don't have any ideas as to how it works and what the parts are for.

There's a lot in the modern world that encourages folks to over-specialize.
In my experience teaching, in particular, I found that many students weren't
interested in an interesting aside because they didn't *need* that tidbit
to pass the class. Take that same logic - "I don't need that to pass" -
and extend it past schoolwork to jobs, relationships, whatever, and you get
90% of the population.

>Another thing that people are remarkably bad at these days is making
>sensible approximations. They just throw a computer at the problem and
>take whatever answer it gives as correct. Now, don't get me wrong -- I
>don't want to solve complex (differential) equations by hand. But often I
>can get an answer to better than 10% by making reasonable approximations,

10%? That's way too much accuracy. When I was at Caltech I took a class
called "Order-of-magnitude Physics" that was probably the best I ever took.
Factor of ten was more than good enough for us :-).

A quick web search reveals the fact that the class now has a web page at

  http://dope.caltech.edu/ph103c/info.html

It's actually close in popularity to the old "Feynman Lectures" classes; it's
very common to find postdocs and professors sitting in the audience along with
the undergrads and grad students.

Tim.
Received on Thu Dec 07 2000 - 16:34:38 GMT

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