I spend a lot of time around Science. In my apartment alone, three of us have majors in pure or applied science. And, I've got to be honest: science is hard.
Just look at some of the classes that we take. My roommate Jayce is a civil engineer, and one of his courses is called CIE 428: Reinforced Concrete Design. Imagine it: 15 glorious academic weeks of concrete.
I think civil engineers are great, because they're the people responsible for the planning, design and maintenance of public works like roads and bridges. But, they do have to take entire courses on concrete.
Obviously, one doesn't just jump right into Reinforced Concrete Design. One probably needs the following prerequisites:
CIE 121 - Sand, Gravel, and Suchlike
CIE 221 - Roads
CIE 301 - Advanced Roads
CIE 342 - Making Roads Bendy, and also Curvy Sometimes
CIE 401 - Roads of the Future (e.g. Bridges)
Jayce says that civil engineers are like architects who have a deeper understanding of structure and sustainability. A typical conversation between an architect and a civil engineer might go like this:
Architect: "Look what I made! Isn't it pretty?"
Civil Engineer: "Yes, it is pretty. Too bad it's structurally unstable, and will soon implode. I'll miss it when it's gone."
My roommate Kevin is a mechanical engineer, so he and Jayce have similar mindsets about science and how to solve problems. Nowhere is this engineering mentality more apparent than when they play a game called The Incredible Machine.
For the uninitiated, "TIM," as it is called, is a computer game whereby players attempt to solve a problem by cobbling together a random collection of parts. I feel I really need to emphasize "random."
The solutions, comprised as they are of these utterly random objects, are always circuitous Rube Goldberg machines that push the limits of common sense.
A seemingly simple problem might be: "Get the balloon off the screen." I will now give you a glimpse into the exchange of suggestions that occurs between Jayce and Kevin:
"If we light the cannon to scare the mouse, it can lift the bucket FOR us!"
"Wait, which laser were we using to destroy the blimp?"
"Where should we put the antigravity pad?"
This, to me, is real scientific genius at work. Sadly, when I tried to play the game I did not meet the same success. The first thing I asked Jayce was, "What does the monkey on the treadmill do?"
Total newbie question. I was disgraced by my ignorance, and asked to vacate the power chair at once.
As a chemist, the problems I solve tend not to involve things like hamsters attached to conveyor belts and pulleys. They're admittedly less exciting.
To give you an idea of what chemists do, I'm going to post an actual question from my final exam in CHE 413 - Instrumental Analysis:
"Sketch a typical Inductively Coupled Plasma atomic emission instrument."
This question assumes that plasma, an ionized gas at a temperature of 17,000 degrees Fahrenheit, is something typical. As in, lots of people have them.
"Hey Brian, where do you keep the Inductively Coupled Plasma?"
"In a jar, next to the Cheerios."
"Is this it?"
"No. That's my Fourier-Transform Interferometer. Please put that back."
I have a really hard time answering a question about Inductively Coupled Plasma. In fact, in my discussion of the instrument, I may have veered a bit.
"The Inductively Coupled Plasma is a key component of the matter/antimatter reactor that drives the Starship Enterprise."
Of course, on an exam like this, citing proper references is crucial.
"Maintaining a plasma temperature of 17,000 degrees Fahrenheit is extremely difficult. For this reason, Scotty uses a mixture of Argon gas and dilithium mined from the asteroid penal colony of Rura Penthe (see: Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country)."
In the end, I have to balance all of this with the demanding critical theory of my English major. While I know I said that science is hard, I've got to admit that English is hard too. Incidentally, when I tell Jayce about the Formalist critical idea of the "concrete universal," he just laughs.
