Listening in relationship

It's always nice to meet new people and learn about new things going around. But what about the one you talk to everyday, your best friend, or significant other. Last week, I got a complaint from my girlfriend when we were video chatting on Skype. She was talking about a topic I don't really care and I start to browsing other website. After about 2or 3minute she noticed it and said: I'm sorry that you are busy, let's talk later. Then she turn off the video. I know she was mad and text her, and I got her reply: If you don't want to listen, then Don't.

I realize the problem is about my not paying attention. On the next day, she call me on skype again. I turned off all the web page and focused on the conversation. The experience is quiet different, it wasn't the boring girl talks anymore. She talked about her problems in school, and I didn't gave any solutions. All I did was listen and shows I care. The conversation was smooth and then we had some fun.

The lesson I learned is that, listening was not hard if one is welling to. And it can be a great bonding experience. The part I need to improve on is to use language to comfort people. I hope I would get better with it.  

Visualization

New source for engergy

Industrial revolution is one of the landmark historical events in human history. The primary accomplishment is to use steam power or stream of water as power source instead of human or animal pulling the wheels. It improves the efficiency of industrial production and faster the speed of human society development. Back then, the power come from coal. Burning it to boil the water, and use the steam to power turbines. Thus we get the mechanical energy needed for production. But the problem start with pollution, the sulfur in the coal would also react in the combustion process and the primary cause for acid rain, sulfur dioxide a produced. So the process of getting mechanical energy lays one of the great problems for future generation. Combustion process produce pollution. London, the capital of industrial revolution became one of the world dirtiest cities. In 1952, the smoggy weather in London traps the pollutant for five days hundreds of people died due to respiration illness.

People in the industrial country start to be aware and they solved this problem by install scrubber to the exhaustion pipe. Everything seems to be perfect. And human dependence on fossil fuel grows to an unexpected level. Our living standard today would be crushed if suddenly fossil fuels are gone.

A lot of scientists today are focusing on the origins of fossil fuel, the sun and the plants. Because most of the alternative energy is not easy obtain or limited to certain environment. People came out of the conventional believes that energy production needs to be on a large scale, like a power plant or river dam. Engineers created small scale instrument that can harvest energy on household bases. I visited a graduate student in agricultural and biological engineer last week. He works on build a small plastic tunnel that use household wasted water as fertilizer for algae. Grow the algae in the plastic tunnel and use it a potential power source at the same time treat the water pollution. So he makes me believe that new ideas can solve some of our society greatest problems.   

Riding uphill

U of I doesn't really have a flat landscape. Drivers might not notice because petroleum engine can provide enough energy for converting into potential energy. But bike riders aren't that luck, most of the time they need to break down hill, wasting energy in form of heat. On the uphill ride, rider have no choice but to ride harder.

The question is: Is it possible to store the energy down hill and release it on the up hill?

My plan is to store the energy in form of elastic potential, so the bike will stress the elastic system on bike during the down hill ride and the system will pull the back wheel. Since energy conserve, and the system have internal resistance. It is still needed to step the peddle, but with much less force. So Ideally the rider ride a bike from Sibel to Union and ride back. He/she only provide the energy to overcome resistance, and he/she has no change in potential. Because the height form the starting point to the ending point are same.

The model I'm planing to use is a rubber connecting to a steel core. When is connecting to the wheel, the wheel will turn the steel core with the rubber coiled on. Thus the extra energy can be stored in stead of wasted it on break. On up hill ride it can be release.

The system might not work because the rubble/ spring can only store limited energy. If more is force on them, they will be stress thus no use anymore. And energy have been converted twice, each time the system would lose some because 100% efficiency is impossible. The energy waste might be more compare with the break system. Some advance engineering technique or design might solve this.

Before the elastic system been use on a real bike. A smaller model might be needed to test the idea.

         

what is important in communication

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen

Before we discuss our topic today, I want to ask you. How many emails do you send per week, how many phone calls you make per week? Or put this question into more extreme. How many word you say per day?

Why do you do that?

We need to connect with people, with our family, our friend, teammate, co-workers even with someone we don’t like to talk with, our boss.

This is what our life will be work as a engineer. Communication is unavoidable, we receive problem on a paper or email, discuss it with co-workers and other professional personnel, find some solutions, put into practice, report the solution to customer or supervisor, and listen to their feedback.

Clear communication is needed for every step. It seems obvious, but let us read a story from sept.30th 1999. “NASAs metric confusion caused Mars orbiter loss” NASA lost a 125 million Mars orbiter because one engineering team used metric units while another used English units for a key spacecraft operation, according to a review finding released Thursday. They are all top engineers in United States, perhaps the best engineers in the world. 125million dollar lost just because two teams didn’t communicate clearly about the unit in the operation. This kind of story will happen again and again if we just ignore the importance of clear communication.

With the development of internet, our communication speed increases. We can read the breaking new in Washington by just sitting in front of a computer with internet. Clicking the mouse, open a news media’s webpage. We can video chat lively with our family or manufacture manger sitting on Mumbai. It creates opportunity but also challenge to us, because we have too much information. One of our daily jobs is to filter out things we don’t need. On the other hand, knowledge that we want to share with our audience maybe not reach their head. So it is important to make some of our point more significant. Make our supervisor please, when we send him/her an email.

To sum up two points I consider important in communication. First is to send accurate information and check carefully when receives it. Be critical about what we learn. Second is to make the clear, logical ideas when we need to communicate. None of us want to be ignored when we have something important to tell.

Thanks for your time. It is my honor to talk with you.

Connection

Living on a campus with more than 40,000 thousand students and faculty, We some time forgot the importance of connections. Why we need to spend quality time on people we see every day? It's a question often appears on my mind since I came to Illinois. But I ignore that beside name, job, & dry conversations. Everyone has their unique story worth to learn.

It starts from a conversation with my TA complaining my chemical engineering professor. My TA smiles and tell me that a lot of student complaining about him. But it because he is assigns to teach this introduction course, far different from his research concentration. He suggested me talk to him for my concern.

I searched for the syllabus professor gave us on first day, checked on his office hour. Monday 4pm, it’s clashed with my ENG 198 lab schedule. I email him about this and he tells me to come on Wednesday or Thursday 8:30am. On Wednesday I get up at 7:30, washed up and sat in front of my computer. I received an email from him that he has a meeting on 8:30 today, sorry for the inconvenience. For the first time I learned what a busy schedule professor has.

I didn’t turn off my laptop and went to sleep; instead I went to school’s website to check his information. Quiet amazingly I found out he earns his MS from California tech and PhD from MIT. His research is not on boring calculations but on coating that increasing efficiency of drug delivery. Something fascinates me as a pre-med student.

On Thursday I went to his office, chat about his life as a student. He talks about how student’s life different from now and back to his time. It was interesting to learn his life as student, as faculty. I ask for opportunity for undergraduate research, he replies that he needs junior or senior student. Ask him again when I get to third year at school.

After all, I learn that he is not the boring lecturer teaching a useless subject. I were touched by his passion for his research. I would love to take his advance courses and learn more about his subject.

Missing Basics

Born in an engineer family, I learned that math & science are important for a qualify engineer at a very young age. Before high school I know engineers have a cool name. I know they work for large company. I know they are smart and good at science. Besides those, I don’t know what engineers do for their jobs.

In senior year, I began to learn something about engineers through Discovery Channel. They need to create an economical and effective solution for real world problems, however sometimes the problem isn’t only about technology. For example, Hongkong Chek Lap Kok airport was a great engineering achievement not only because the engineer created solutions for limited space and high speed oversea transportations but they secured their funding from banks by negotiations. Without their communication skills, the project would fail under financial and political pressures.
I had some senses of what is the jobs waiting for an engineer.

After learning about Missing Basic, I began to understand what makes a qualify engineer. Communication, Organizing, Modeling and other missing basic played an important role with the basics to make a useful engineer. Since anyone solo has a limited ability, engineers need to communicate effectively with others to solve some difficult problems. Organizing is necessary for anyone has multiple tasks, time management is crucial to finish a project. At some instance a full size project need to test on a smaller scale. The model needed accurate enough to be useful. Good model can save time and finance, misrepresented model could endanger the public after the full size project completed.

Engineers need a lot of quality and skills to solve real world problems. Three skills I would like to improve are time management, communication, and to ask good questions.

As an engineering and pre-med student, time is a priceless resource. There are so many things to do besides classes, homework and projects. I also need time for relax and family. Using time effectively is essential for my college life and after. Like Stephen Covey taught in his book “7 habits of highly effective people”. I would organize my events into four categories and label each event with important or not important, urgent or not urgent. Avoid not important & not urgent things and focus on important subjects. Create a to-do list and schedule each week starting this week end. Review my schedule on each Friday to see what I have done.

English is not my first language, some time it’s a little difficult for me to write or speak accurately. This weakness is limiting my ability to communicate effectively. Now I’m taking composition class and next year I will take communication class, besides I’m planning to practice my English by talking with others on a special issue or participate in the writer’s workshop.

The third skill I need to improve is to ask good question. I spent many years in school being train to obey the authority without asking questions. It becomes an obstacle for me to do better in science and engineering. In order to get better, I will read to more on critical thinking in this month. Preparing to ask why when the textbook or the instructor teaches.

Wish everyone can get some improvement this year, have a good weekend!!