Chris Gammell returns to The Engineering Commons to discuss how his views on engineering education (and the engineering profession) have evolved over the past five years.
Our guest for this episode is Chris Gammell, former co-host and founder of The Engineering Commons.
The first episode of The Engineering Commons was posted on April 5, 2012.
Chris recently returned from a trip to Australia, where he was able to meet Dave Jones, his co-host of seven years on The Amp Hour podcast, for the first time.
Our guest is a member of the Chicago workspace known as mHub.
Having co-hosted 25 episodes of The Engineering Commons, Chris stepped away to start Contextual Electronics.
Carmen attended a short course on power electronics at Virginia Tech over the summer.
Brian broaches the subject of how veteran engineers avoid burnout.
Chris tries to maintain a “beginner’s mind” (shoshin) as he prepares study materials for his Contextual Electronics members.
“Manfacturing isn’t glamorous,” says Chris in a recent blog post for Supplyframe Hardware.
Chris and Carmen both wrote posts for Engineer Blogs, a website that has unfortunately been inactive since 2012.
Interested in writing about electronics manufacturing? Chris is willing to pay for quality blog posts!
We’re pretty sure Chris is pulling our leg when he says his favorite beer discovery in Chicago is Old Style.
Our guest for this episode is Grady Hillhouse, a professional civil engineer from Austin, Texas who runs the Practical Engineering channel on YouTube.
Grady spends much of his professional time working on dams and hydraulic structures.
Extending his early woodworking videos, Grady first dabbled in the area of engineering outreach with a YouTube video describing a dams and reservoirs exhibit that he built for a kindergarten class taught by his wife.
Another Career Day demonstration built by Grady was an exhibit explaining tuned mass dampers.
Grady reveals that his video narrations are almost completely scripted, and that it takes about a month for him to produce a new video.
In producing his videos, Grady makes use of the following software tools: Vegas, Audacity, Inkscape, and Gimp.
We talk with Gary Bertoline about graphics communication, computer-aided design, credentials, and competency-based degree programs in this episode of The Engineering Commons.
Our guest for this episode is Gary Bertoline, Dean of Purdue University’s College of Technology. In addition to his administrative work, Dean Bertoline has authored a number of books on graphics communication and computer-aided design (CAD).
Graphics is a communication medium, just like language or mathematics.
Mental manipulation of figures and objects in three-dimensional space is known as spatial visualization.
Carmen expresses his desire that electrical engineers possess better drafting skills.
According to Dean Bertoline, computer gaming can help improve visualization skills. So now you have an excuse!
Ancestor to today’s CAD software, Sketchpad was a computer graphics program written in 1963 by Ivan Sutherland. (A YouTube video shows the software in action.)
Autodesk and Dassault Systems are large companies that have survived in the competitive computer-aided drafting (CAD) industry.
Brian mentions the use of a STEP file, which is an industry standard (ISO 10303) for exchanging 3D model information. The acronym stands for “Standard for the Exchange of Product model data.”
HFSS is a commercial finite-element model solver for electromagnetic structures (owned by Ansys). Carmen isn’t sure of the acronym’s meaning, but Wikipedia tell us that it originally stood for “High Frequency Structural Simulator.”
Carmen’s “E&M” reference refers to “electricity and magnetism.”
Digital models can be made to behave as physical objects through the use of a physics engine, which is software that constrains the models to conform with “real-world” physical phenomena.
Our guest mentions “Generation on a Tightrope,” a book that argues today’s students need a very different education from the one that their parents received.
Also mentioned is “Creating Innovators,” a book that explores how the educational process must change to encourage young people to become innovators.
Chris Gammell returns to The Engineering Commons to discuss how his views on engineering education (and the engineering profession) have evolved over the past five years.
