http://www.orangewallaby.net/wall/2004/stealing-our-thunder personal and professional notes from a naive chemistry professor Wed, 20 May 2009 18:19:07 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.3 http://www.orangewallaby.net/wall/2004/stealing-our-thunder/comment-page-1#comment-25 Dad Fri, 22 Oct 2004 23:48:10 +0000 http://www.orangewallaby.net/wall/?p=136#comment-25 Yay! Those engineers will take over and reinvent most any experimental technique. Problem is, they're pretty good in the packaging and economics departments. Rather better than us physicists, and, I suspect, than chemists, either. I remember my advisor saying that, if my apparatus lasted longer than needed to confirm my results, it was "wasted time on engineering!". I think that is typical. We know that someone will put pretty buttons and knobs on it, and sell it for a big profit. So we don't need to do the engineering parts. But it would be nice if they gave credit (a nice reference to the Rev. Sci. I. articals would be fine) where it was due. And I recall a society of engineers, I forget which, but I think Aerospace, who wanted to lodge serious complaints with the press for their coverage of NASA's work in the '60's: When it failed, it was an engineering flaw, but when it flew, it was a scientific wonder. Yay! Those engineers will take over and reinvent most any experimental technique. Problem is, they’re pretty good in the packaging and economics departments. Rather better than us physicists, and, I suspect, than chemists, either. I remember my advisor saying that, if my apparatus lasted longer than needed to confirm my results, it was “wasted time on engineering!”. I think that is typical. We know that someone will put pretty buttons and knobs on it, and sell it for a big profit. So we don’t need to do the engineering parts. But it would be nice if they gave credit (a nice reference to the Rev. Sci. I. articals would be fine) where it was due. And I recall a society of engineers, I forget which, but I think Aerospace, who wanted to lodge serious complaints with the press for their coverage of NASA’s work in the ’60′s: When it failed, it was an engineering flaw, but when it flew, it was a scientific wonder.

]]> http://www.orangewallaby.net/wall/2004/stealing-our-thunder/comment-page-1#comment-24 darceyjerromsky Fri, 22 Oct 2004 23:05:21 +0000 http://www.orangewallaby.net/wall/?p=136#comment-24 Hey - all us engineers aint so bad! Thanks for linking to me! Hey – all us engineers aint so bad! Thanks for linking to me!

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