Badger Crossroads

Engineering Studies, Careers, and Transitions

Page 9 of 13

Citation Utilization

April 18, 2017 /

Citations and reference lists may not be one of those first tasks students eagerly seize upon in their assignments. Which is curious, since they add value on many levels. It can be a signal of carelessness when one reads a paper that uses too few references, too many, or presents them in unsophisticated formats.

Seeeeeexxxy because reasons

It is useful to review why citations are valuable, what standard you might prefer and the reasons for it, and why moderate use of them can enhance your writing and reputation.

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Minimising Interfaces

April 11, 2017 /

Let’s talk about Parking.

Parking is difficult. Ideally one would walk or bike to a grocery store, get some sun, get exercise, save on fuel. But when we do drive to a store, parking lots are a mixed hell of crowded stalls, uncertain pedestrian/vehicle interactions, stray shopping carts, and other threats to one’s peace of mind. They always drive me crazy, and I for one would rather park far away and walk, rather than be the person that makes a few laps around the aisles looking for a closer spot.

There’s something else I prefer to do at any sort of parking structure, and it puzzles me that in general people make other choices and leave this opportunity available. That is to park at a location where the number of car-neighbors is minimised. These spots are often free at the end of the lot, even though there are cars in the middle sections.

Hassle-free disembarkation

Finding an island or pillar to park next to reduces the chance of door dings or getting side scraped, being parked in, and just all the other hassles in dealing with the Sartrean hell that is asphalt and other people.  It’s well worth an extra couple meters to decrease that stress.

How is this generalizable to other issues engineers face?

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The Mystery of Verkfraedi and Taeknifraedi

March 12, 2017 / / 0 Comments

This is probably one of the most ambivalent posts in this collection, and there are many of those, since simple choices/perspectives are not as interesting. It will also be a topic that is a bit difficult at least for Americans to get their minds around.

Imagine you own a vehicle. If someone asks you what type of vehicle it is, you say “1967 Pontiac GTO”. Then you drive it to a country where people that see it from the right side call it a “1967 Pontiac GTO Right Side” and those who see it from the left call it a “1967 Pontiac GTO Left Side”. You can’t figure out why people would call what is essentially the same vehicle two different names. More so, the people in that country insist there are significant differences, even extending to their understanding they are two different vehicles! There may be better analogies but that’s my attempt to draw a parallel between how Americans view engineering career paths, and how some European countries (including Iceland, that I am more familiar with), view them.

Any pretext to show a GTO (Photo: Flickr)

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How EES Changes Your Perception of Systems

March 6, 2017 / / 0 Comments

As mentioned in a previous post, Engineering Equation Solver (EES, pronounced ‘ease’) is one of the most useful tools in my toolbox. Let’s describe in more detail how access to this tool changes the way you think about solving engineering calculations and how systems behave. For several reasons, this software is my ‘secret weapon’ at work, and I think engineers that don’t have access to something like this, or have never learned to think in a way that users of it can, are at a bit of a disadvantage. We should move more people to the ‘enhanced capabilities’ camp if we can. Here are advantages to consider, if you haven’t picked up capabilities with EES through your education or work already.

A Badger Product

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