Monday, November 5, 2018

Are Engineers Susceptible to Stress?

Take a walk!.  Thats what i do.. when stressed..  stress in the sense that... i intend or try to do something and the situation does not allow me to do so.. may be i dont have the conviction or whatever the inference is.

The interesting thing is.. after a walk... the stress takes a walk.. :-) and i am relaxed. so... who am i?... But the big I is not the topic for this blog.... it is all about sress and engineers....

I happened to take a walk on one such.. what else... a stressful situation..   The question that rushed internally was and is.. the title of this post.

Yes. I am an engineer... no no no. i as a person... holding an engineering degree certificate.. thats all. thats how i got my 12th certificate and my 10th earlier to that... The certificates were not earned.. they were conferred based on some vested interest of some one else.. I thought i was worth it... little did i realize then... how foolish i was and am...I am also part of I scratch you scratch community...

A sincere someone asked... a valid... very valid question.. "so, what have you engineered so far?".  in that sense, i am not an engineer and i cannot be stressed. so.. what else....

The train of thoughts...  random thoughts...  as it occurred...

As much as a "point" is for geometry.... "acceleration"  is for classical mechanics.... "velocity" is for relativity.. the "pulse" for a traditional doctor.... ofcourse modern doctors rely on engineered instruments to track the origin of the pulse in the name of stethascope.... The "stress at a point" is fundamental to a mechanical or civil engineer.   Not sure what is it for an electrical, electronics or a chemical engineer.. some say its all about electrons....

As a certificate holder of mechanical engineering, all i know is that... Stress at a point requires 9 numbers in a 3x3 matrix to specify it... further more... to understand it... and use it for prediction... may be thats what engineers do...it takes differential and integral calculus.. Who knows calculus? May be newton.. may be leibnitz... may be maxwells, gausses and feynmens... But not faraday for sure..  Had faraday tried to understand calculus... he might not have had the time enough to conduct experiments with electricity and magnetism.... (this is bad inference... may be...)

After all the random thoughts have subsided through the brain.... there was a nasty flash....

An engineer tries to recreate or duplicate nature. In the process, engineers have gone far away from understanding nature.....  the plants... the animals... the birds...  the air... the fire... the water... the earth... the sky....the social psychology.  How can an advanced engineering community live in harmony with nature?....  It seems to be a contrary... an Irony....

An engineers pursuit of understanding the stress of a physical object.... seems to result in exceeding the safe and yield stresses (ultimate stress for brittle materials ) of the environment.

Naturally .. nature will withstand the stress... what about us? engineers?  ... the lesser mortals.. ?

This reasoning aint self-defeating.... A realization or an opportunity for .... alas we all like to play with words... ...awareness engineering or mindful engineering.... dont forget... there is environmental engineering....

We love to pass the buck... the famous question... "Who kills Creativity?"... The most loved answer seems to be schools... and then the teachers.... we do not want to accept the fact that... the very reason being the parents themselves...  we dont accept. dont we?...

Some day... we engineers too might realize...

Note:
Dots were used very liberally in this article.. Just because, i did not know, when to put a comma and when to put a fullstop.. so....  thanks to the dots. though they are abstract, they seem to somehow connect.. to reality....