I’ve had the privilege to have mentored a handful of engineers in my career.  I grew fond and protective of them.  They are all extended family.  Naturally, they were all different.  Some needed insight into how to debug a particular problem.  Others asked about the history of a particular component and why it behaved the way it did.  I rank designing components with them among the most fun and rewarding activities.

Engineers consistently learn best by ‘doing’.  As I mentored them, I instructed them to feel free bang their heads against the wall for a while; solving that puzzle will both best commit it to memory and boost their self-confidence.  However, we also set healthy boundaries for how long they may struggle with that puzzle.  I advised them to come get me if they had not made any progress for a while.  We set our rule of thumb to two hours.

Continue reading “To those we’ve lost…”

As a child, I once came upon a documentary on the development of the Bell X-1, the first supersonic plane.  Honestly, I don’t remember much from it.  I don’t even remember what the plane looked like.  The underlying and pervasive theme centered around breaking the sound barrier, most of the observed behavior about flight are transformed as your plane approaches the sound barrier.  They needed to build the plane to function differently than other planes of the era.

However, the speed of sound (767 mph) is a natural barrier.  Sonic booms don’t arbitrarily occur; it’s not as if we sweet talk the atmosphere to behave that way for show.  Engineers and pilots navigated and overcame the challenges to building and operating the Bell X-1.  As an engineer, I acknowledge it as a great human achievement, but I also understand that it overcame a natural barrier, not an artificial one.

Continue reading “The mythical four-minute mile”