Interview Success

I posted earlier with some questions that I would potentially ask a person in my future career field. I conducted and recorded the interview on March 24^th with an MSU Faculty member. I did not conduct the interview with a Mechanical Engineer, but instead a faculty member who took a more theoretical approach in his career. I interviewed Dr. Reinhard Schwienhorst, an experimental particle physicist, who currently teaches physics here at Michigan State and conducts research for CERN (in Switzerland). He is a German native who moved to the USA when he began working on his doctorate at the University of Minnesota (“Go Gophers”). His interest for physics began in 5^th grade. I could not believe it, but when asked about when he became interested in his field, he said, “Well, when I was in 5^th grade, I had this teacher who had us put circuits together using a battery, paper clips, and light bulb. He was a very interesting teacher, engaging, and putting these circuits together had me interested in this sort of field.” So, for those younger teachers out there, you could be the ones who set the tone on a certain field for someone’s life.

His current job is to work on processing the data for the experiments conducted at CERN. He works with a group of six people, just one group formed out of 3,000 people. These 3,000 people report to a group of 1,000 people and then the 1,000 people work for a smaller group. He told me that they are currently working on the 2012 data set. Please note that CERN opened in 2008. It takes these people a long time to go through terabytes upon terabytes of data.

For main part of the interview, I asked him about the communication style in his field. His main form of communication is through presentations, mainly power point presentations. As he attends big/small conferences at CERN and meetings with his six member group, he has to convey findings through speaking. He has to present to his small group, at these conferences, and to the thousand people that he reports to. He uses videos and images to keep the audience engaged. He also has to write reports. He uses a basic logical structure. It goes from the title, the abstract, a thesis with a solid intro, charts, evidence, data, and a conclusion. The evidence and credibility he establishes is through all of the data he collects at CERN. He sorts through the data to find what backs up the experiment, finds evidence that may refute it, and reports it in a standard format. He says that anyone he works with stays away from the use of emotion in his reports as it detracts from the logical direct point of view that scholarly people like to hear and use. The diction that is used displays a higher level of education since the people working on these experiments have a higher level of education.

These reports and presentations and the style they use are very similar to the academic articles that I have researched. The use of credible evidence, lack of emotion, and the logical structure that is used is all very similar. This is similar and different compared to the blogs that I have seen on the internet representing Mechanical Engineering. I have made this comparison in a different post already.

His job field is very interesting. It is not the same direction that I am headed, but it is interesting to see where the next step in a field that can affect mine is going. I did not ask him anything particular on his research, but I do know that at the large hadron collider, physics is making great strides. They have picked up a Nobel Prize and maybe more in the future. I wish the best of luck to those working there and to my old professor, Dr. Reinhard Schwienhorst.

Hands-On Experience in ME

            I am currently part of an on-project that I started on my own almost three years ago. It is a hands-on experience. It is a concept based off of drone technology. The first phase of the project was to develop a “land drone.” In this post, this is the only one phase I will talk about. This may seem easy, but starting from scratch makes it a very tough. There is an infinite amount of ways to go about this. So I applied the condition, “it must cost under $200.” Seems reasonable. Power sources become limited, how it moves becomes limited, and what controls it will use becomes limited. Then, I added that I wanted to make it go as far as possible with the most control possible. Two more conditions to optimize. Using an old RC car chassis, I found a power supply and made sure that the motors and everything still worked. Finding a solution to communicate with the motors from a remote location was a challenge. After a few failed attempts at the problem, my final solution consisted of keeping the controls digital to optimize response and control. The digital solution is the use of WiFi. This was also convenient because routers go relatively cheap on the online market place and are easy to work with. I could mount a network camera onboard and be able to view it from a ways away. Network cameras are much cheaper than other wireless cameras with their receiving units. Back to the control, transferring the signal from the routers became an interesting question. Easy to answer though. As there are still people out there who enjoy doing hands on projects, this means there is an entire market place out there for this kind of stuff. The Arduino shop was my next stop. They supply all sorts of programmable boards that help the user achieve endless results. I bought an Arduino Ethernet board and mounted it on the car. From this point on, I asked my dad for help on the programming as I have limited experience with programming and he had worked with Arduino before. I would continue to work on all of the hardware. The biggest challenge of the project came next. How to wire the entire system? Through a bit a research, I came up with a very complicated breadboard. In the end, it consisted of three voltage regulators, a few resistors, two transistors, and a few capacitors along with several wires leading to the camera, router, router amplifier, Arduino board, the power source, and the motors. It is the heart of this drone.

            Several errors along the way have helped us both learn about the complication and specificity of electronics. The project is still in the first phase. It is days away now from completion of that phase. The last few bugs need to be worked out. Because I am in college now, it is harder to go back home and do work so this drags it out even longer. The project could have been done in a week with the right parts and experienced minds, but because shipping takes time, thinking takes time, trial and error takes time, and the fact that we are both very busy people outside of this, it takes us a lot of time. The next challenge will be to see if an aerial drone can be made in a similar fashion for a similar price.

Interview Questions about Writing

Note: This interview will be conducted with an MSU staff member who partakes in particle physics research around the globe.

1.     You analyze theoretical research in particle research in Switzerland. How do you write your general reports and findings of the ongoing research? How do you format your reports? Where do you put the data in respect to your conclusion?

2.     How much time do you input into your final reports before you submit them to your audience? Who is the audience that you yourself write for?

3.     Do you run any blogs or submit regularly to any specific scholarly mediums? How do you generally report your findings?

4.     Which source of data do you use the most? Is it the data found at the collider facility or do you mainly use other primary sources in your reports? How many secondary sources do you use?

5.     Is the writing in your field mainly attempting to prove theories with data? How much persuasion do you use to convince the audience of your point?

6.     In writing, how much do you use emotion when trying to convince the reader of a certain point? Logic? Common sense?

7.     What is the average length of writing you do in your day-to-day life?

8.     Most importantly, what font choice and font size do you use most often? Why?