[Rhodes22-list] The Nerd May Survive Another Semester At College!

[Mark Kaynor]

Roger,

Awesome story. I love hearing about petty tyrants getting their comeuppance.
And like Rik said, I doubt luck has much to do w/ it. I'm getting a kick
hearing about how the "old guy" is showing the youngsters how it's done, too
<g>. Congratulations, and keep it up!

Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org
[mailto:rhodes22-list-bounces at rhodes22.org]On Behalf Of Roger Pihlaja
Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2004 3:18 PM
To: The Rhodes 22 mail list
Subject: [Rhodes22-list] The Nerd May Survive Another Semester At
College!


Hi Everybody,

It's Roger.  I haven't been contributing much lately & I thought I just drop
the list a line to let everyone know what's been going on in my life.  My
last regular week of classes for the Winter Semester, 2004 at SVSU is over.
Dr. Schilling told me I have an A in ME497, Special Research Project.

Last Friday 04/23/2004, Kevin VanSickle, my partner in ME480, Senior Design
1; & I had a really big day.  Our final assignments for ME480 were due.  On
Friday, we had to turn in 2 bound copies of the final report, the project
notebook, give a poster presentation, and give an oral presentation.  All of
that together was worth 50% of the grade in the class.  I had an A in ME480
going into Friday & I think everything went pretty well that day; but, I
won't really know for certain until the grades are posted.  Kevin & I had to
be at SVSU by 8:00 AM on Friday dressed in suit & tie, have our poster set
up by 9:00 AM, the press & other VIP's toured the displays from 9:00 AM -
10:00 AM, and the displays were open to the public from 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM.
>From 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM, we had a catered lunch.  From 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM, we
had the oral presentations, which were also open to the public.  My group
gave the 1st oral presentation at 1:00 PM.  The presentations had to be 30
minutes long, all the team members had to speak, the presentation had to be
done electronically using MS Powerpoint, & there was a 5 minute Q&A period
after each presentation.  Each person in the audience had a score sheet for
each presentation.  Part of our grade was based upon how the nontechnical
public scored our presentations.  As I said, I think Friday went pretty well
& I should end up with an A in ME480; but, who knows?

There is a professor at SVSU, Dr. Shlien, that teaches ME356, Fluid
Mechanics.  Chemical engineers get lots of fluid mechanics in their
undergraduate curriculum.  ME356 was one of the classes I was able to
petition out of taking based upon my academic transcript from Michigan Tech
University.  So, I've never had to take a class from Dr. Shlien.  But, Dr.
Shlien has a reputation for being a really tough professor that likes to put
down his students in public.  During my poster presentation in the morning,
Dr. Shlien cornered me & asked me a question about how much force was going
to generated against a particular structural panel by the airflow inside the
machine.  I admitted I hadn't calculated that particular number; but,
speculated that 50 cubic feet/min airflow at a few inches of water column
pressure wasn't likely to generate very much force at that spot.  Dr. Shlien
got this big smirk on his face & said, "If he was correct; then, our entire
senior project design would have to reworked."  If he were correct, that
would be true & I felt pretty bad about missing something so important.  I
kept looking at our design & wondering what this PhD expert in fluid
mechanics was seeing that I had missed.  Well, I tried to do the calculation
in my head.  But, in the middle of the poster presentation, with dozens of
people milling about & me trying to greet people & give my presentation, I
just couldn't concentrate.  So, after the poster session was finished at
noon, I went up to my office where it was quiet & I could concentrate.  I
pulled out a pencil & paper, derived the defining equations from 1st
principles, & worked out an upper limit for the force at only 0.018 lbs,
which is negligible, just as I had suspected.  Then, I went & found Dr.
Shlien in the lunch line & showed him the calculation.  After looking at for
a few minutes & asking me a few more questions, he agreed with my result.
He said, "I was lucky we were dealing with air flow & not water."  I just
replied, "I have to admit I hadn't considered the issue because my 26 years
of experience dealing with fluid flow gave me a pretty good engineering
intuition re such things."  "We'd have done something different if the
apparatus had been designed to handle water instead of air."  Dr. Shlien
then said, "It was too bad I showed him this because he wanted to ask the
question during the Q&A session after our oral presentation."  I just
shrugged my shoulders & said, "Oh well, I'm sure you will think of something
else to ask us."  This exchange took place in the lunch line right in front
of the entire senior engineering class.  Well, with this challenge, of
course Dr. Shlien wasn't going to let it go at that!  So after our oral
presentation, Dr. Shlien asked a question regarding how certain tuning
parameters in the control system of our project were calculated.  As soon as
I heard the question I replied, "I have some supplemental slides in another
MS Powerpoint file that address that issue.  Would you like to see them?"
As soon as he said, "Yes", I thought to myself, "Excellent!  There won't be
any more questions after this!"  It took a minute or so to pull up the
supplemental slides off the hard disk on the PC driving the projector.  As
soon as I started, Dr. Shlien knew he'd been had.  There were 6 slides that
described a theoretical heat & mass transfer model.  We're talking heavy
duty differential equations & calculus here!  Remember, I did my MS thesis
on heat & mass transfer!  After the 2nd slide, Dr. Shlien interrupted me in
mid sentence & said he didn't want to use up all the Q&A time.  I said, "OK"
"To make a long story short, we use this geometry, (flip to next slide)
apply Fourier's Law of Heat Conduction & Fick's 1st Law of Diffusion to get
these coupled simultaneous differential equations, (flip to next slide)
here's the solution in equation form, (flip to next slide) here's the
solution plotted graphically, (flip to next slide) from that we get a time
constant for the system, (flip to last slide) & that's where these control
system tuning parameters come from."  "Are there any other questions?"  That
was the end of our Q&A time.  Kevin & I sat down, big smiles on our faces!

Dr. Shlien must have been somewhat pissed off, because he absolutely ripped
up the next group's oral presentation!  The group had used a software
package called computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to calculate the airflow &
pressure drop across a certain complex nozzle shape they had designed.  Dr.
Shlien asked them to explain how the airflow could reach sonic velocity at a
certain pressure drop.  What he was looking for was Bernoulli's equation.
Bernoulli's equation is one of the 1st fundamental equations you learn about
in fluid mechanics, almost everything else in the field of fluid mechanics
is derived from it.  It would have taken about a minute to explain the
concept of critical sonic flow on the white board with a few well chosen
equations.  But, the whole group got rattled & just stood there like
frightened whitetail deer in Dr. Shlien's glaring headlights!  He made it
sound like all they knew how to do was punch numbers into a commercially
produced modeling package; but, had no idea of how it worked.  Hopefully,
that's not actually the case.  I felt really sorry for them.

Of course, the 2 weeks leading up to Friday were pretty hectic!  Both Kevin
& I put in some really long hours getting ready for Friday.  We were ready
to go at 9:30 PM on Thursday, the night before.  Believe me, when I left
SVSU on Thursday night, there were lots of groups still working on some
facet of their projects.  I got a pretty decent night's sleep; but, I think
many of the other groups pulled all nighters.  Oh well, they're young &
strong - builds character!

After the presentations were over & we helped clean up the debris left
behind after the posters & presentations, nearly all the groups went over to
TGI Fridays by Fashion Square Mall in Saginaw, MI to celebrate.  I just had
a beer with the other groups and left after about 45 minutes.  However, some
of the groups must have turned it into a real pub crawl because there were
lots of hung over senior engineering students in Pioneer Hall on Saturday!
I was kind of a celebrity at the party at TGI Fridays because I guess nobody
has ever put it to Dr. Shlien in an oral presentation before.  It was done
in a very public forum & the entire senior engineering class just loved it!
I feel a little bit sorry for my partner, Kevin, because he still has to
take Dr. Shlien's Fluid Mechanics class.  That guy must be a real SOB in
front of a class, especially if you haven't done your homework!  I thank God
for delivering me from this man.  There were dozens of things he might have
asked that I wasn't prepared for & instead he asked one of the few questions
I was well prepared for.

On Saturday, I went into SVSU to meet with my group for ME451, Machine
Design.  Working together, we knocked off an entire design project report
from start to finish in only 4 hours!  The project was to design a power
screw actuator that had a 12 inch stroke & could move an 8000 lb load full
stroke in 15 seconds or less.  This was our 4th design project as a team &
we're functioning as a well-oiled machine.  I typed the entire report while
Dan & Gary, my two partners, did the calculations.  Then, when they had
finished the design calculations, we went back thru the report page by page
& inserted the calculated values for the results in the appropriate spots.
The report was 9 single spaced typed pages long in 12 Arial font.  The
typing of the text wasn't bad; but, there were a lot of heavy duty math
equations, which are very time consuming to create using the MS Equation
editor.  The 4th design report is due on Tuesday at 10:30 AM when the final
exam in ME451 begins.  My team has a 95% average on the 3 design reports
we've submitted so far this semester.

I have two actual final exams this week.  The final exam in ME451, Machine
Design, will be Tuesday, 04/27/2004, from 10:30 AM - 12:20 PM.  The final
exam in ME380, Manufacturing Processes & Systems, will be Wednesday,
04/28/2004, from 10:30 AM - 12:20 PM.  Assuming my design team gets our
average score of 95% on the 4th design project report, I will have a 90.5%
average in ME451 going into the final.  I have a 94.2% average in ME380
going into the final.  So, A's or A-'s are possible in both classes,
depending upon how I do on the final exams.

Sunday & Monday, I will be finishing up my business plan & final oral
presentation for MSTP531, Entrepreneurship Seminar.  On Wednesday, from 4:00
PM - 5:50 PM, I have to give an oral presentation of my business plan.  This
will be a formal affair; suit & tie, MS Powerpoint slides presented
electronically, & turn in 2 bound copies of the business plan.  The oral
presentation can only be 10 minutes long & will be scored by a panel of 3
judges, each with experience in start-up businesses.  It's supposed to
simulate the amount of time a busy venture capitalist might give you to
convince them to invest in your business.  The oral presentation & written
business plan are the only grades I will get in the class.  So, I have no
average going into the final MSTP531 session on Wednesday!  Hey, no
pressure.

On Thursday morning, I will bring Dynamic Equilibrium home from winter
storage at the Midland County Fairgrounds.  I have no idea when the boat
will go in the water.  My dock is still a wreck from the ice damage in
March, 2004.  So, I have no place to tie up.

Thursday afternoon, I will drive up to Northern Michigan University in
Marquette, MI to pick up my older son Daniel.  The plan is to stay in the
dorm with Daniel on Thursday night, clean up his room, pack, and checkout on
Friday.  I'm hoping to be back home by Friday evening.

So, by this time next week, for better or worse, Winter Semester, 2004 will
be history.  Wish me luck!

Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilibrium
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