Ouch!!! Wet rates keep going up!

On Sep 23, 1:55 am, Jim Logajan wrote:
Andrew Sarangan wrote:
I think you are right on the money. I am in the education field, and
see this phenomenon first hand. We are promoting an educational system
that does not reward hands-on skills and the joy of creating things.
Elec engineering students graduate without ever having seen a
soldering iron;

Ahem. We used plug-in breadboards and wirewrap in college to wire up
circuits, not soldering irons. As we should have - we were learning
concepts, not necessarily eye-hand skills. In college you are supposed to
experiment with circuits and soldering is an impediment to that goal. And
that was in the physics program at the University of Minnesota. You can't
get a physics degree without taking the required 1 year lab course, 2/3rds
of which was electronics. (The required text was (still is?) Horowitz and
Hill's "The Art of Electronics" which a lot of people consider a classic
text. I know one of the authors used to contribute in the
sci.electronics.design group - not sure if he still does.)

mech engineers graduate never having done any machining.

While having hands-on experience with machining is nice, it isn't necessary
to doing good design work. Especially when a lot of machined items are now
done with CNC the hands-on experience has less relevance. We all live the
same number of years yet the amount of things to learn keeps growing -
something has to give. For example, machining isn't relevant to much of the
design work they'd do with composite materials, so that is yet another
reason why it is no calamity is mech engineers graduate without machining
experience.

Engineering is a combination of "practice" and "concepts". I have seen
how a lack of hands-on experience can be a big handicap. Many students
turn in designs that are conceptually and mathematically fine, but
impossible to make in real life. That is the result of our
educational system focusing too much on "concepts" and not enough on
"practice". Part of the reason is, the teachers themselves don't have
the practical experience. One could become an engineering professor
without having spent a single day practicing engineering. If you can
demonstrate the concepts on paper, you are good to go. What do you
think they are going to teach their students? But you can't design a
good bicycle if you don't ride a bicycle. You can't design a good
airplane if you don't fly airplanes. All the theory in the world is
not going to help you make a widget if you don't work on widgets. The
Wright brothers built the airplane from their rudimentary bicycle
buiding experience. Their designs were driven by "gut feeling", not by
anaylsis. I don't see how you can develop a gut feeling if you don't
have the hands-on experience. I met a mech PhD student who brought me
a piece of steel block and called it aluminum. He had no "gut feeling"
for how much aluminum weighs compared to steel. It is dificult to
imagine how one could be innovative with such a serious handicap. When
a EE PhD connects the live and neutral wires together, you have to
think that something is seriously wrong. Regarding concepts vs
practice, it has been said that the steam engine did more for
thermodynamics than thermodyanmics did for the steam engine. The same
could be said about aerodynamics and airplanes. There are exceptions.
Einstein did not have much hands-on experience, yet he transformed a
century worth of techology. Wright brothers did not have much
theoretical framework. But most of us are not Einsteins or Wright
brothers. We need a good balance of concepts and practice in order to
make useful things.