Overheard in Lab

This afternoon after lunch, in my cubicle I overheard my labmate and another student, heads down hunched over a pad of green engineering paper, busily working through a basic mechanics problem - and by the end of the conversation, they had derived from basic tensor theory the deformation expected in an infinite plane of compressed material, as opposed to an axially loaded rectangular bar, which requires a correction using the bulk modulus because Poisson's Ratio is not in effect.

Whew. Let it be known that I can't derive this from my head like my labmate did - there would be heavy textbook referencing for me to get there... and maybe some Wikipedia entries...

At the end of the whole derivation, however, the answer was a fairly standard equation, and any mechanics folks would recognize the method.

"Do I have to cite this in my conference paper?" asked the thoroughly dazzled student.

"No," says my labmate, "That would be like citing Hooke's Law... it's a commonly understood thing that uses a trivial derivation to those in the field."

There was a moment of silence in the office, and then a small voice piped up from the other end of the room.... "Um, I just cited Hooke's Law in my paper..."

Some of us are more thorough than others!

Heard at the Office

"Stupid orders of magnitude! I'm just living my life in a skewed log-log plot...."

Ah, control systems. :)

Heard At the Office

Labmate 1 trying to get labmate 2 to take a break and join the group around the watercooler:

"Hey, come sit down and decompress with us."

Labmate 2, having spent the entire morning watching the FIFA soccer game:

"But I haven't even COMPRESSED yet today!"

I Hate it When

I wrote on my To-Do list, "Check on items."

How helpful.

Turning to the Dark Side

I just wrote an email with the words "value proposition."

My transition to the dark side (business school) is nearly complete...

Left That Item On the To-Do List A Bit Too Long...

I pulled in my window air conditioner today, and had to peel off the icicles and snow before I put it in storage.

I think this is a sign I should be a little more on top of my life...

Wide World of Web 2.0

A classmate just informed me that our professor tweeted about my presentation of my class project this week.

I am not sure how I feel about this new development.

I suppose as long as nobody is tweeting that I'm doing a crappy job of something, I'm okay...

How does the internet feel? Is it not odd that professors now have tweet streams? Is it not odd that a professor will reference the student's project? Does this not cause the students who did NOT get mentioned to need therapy? Or is this social networking bit a reality I need to get used to?

Passing Thought

It is small difference between being neck-deep in what you love, and over your head.