Electronics

As some people always say (MFO, for instance) “it’s the technology that gets you”.   How many times have you been in a meeting/seminar/presentation when time has been lost struggling to get the projector/laptop/screen to talk to each other in order to proceed.  Well, I had a good lesson in the “gets you” department yesterday.

Our Rotary Club received a grant to support a series of after school sessions for high school sophomores with an aim to stress the importance of staying in school and going to college.  It is held weekly in one of our local high schools, and lasts about an hour.  Various Rotarians present a “who am I and what do I do?” show to expose the students to a wide spectrum of occupations and stories of how and why the speaker got there.

I was asked to participate as being an Aeroelastic Engineer.  So, Mr. Aeroelastic Engineer, how do you explain things like eigenvectors, eigenvalues, normal modes, natural frequencies, modal coalescence, and oscillatory instabilities to a bunch of kids in their second year of high school?

Well, you gather all the video clips of flutter models destroying themselves and things like the Tacoma Narrows bridge coming apart, in flight instances (F-117 crash) and stuff like that. Then surround it with simplified diagrams showing pitch and plunge motion, also bring a metal bar and "C" clamp with you to make a “doinger” to show cantilevered bending, and so forth.  I got the presentation put together wh  I finally made a stab at constructing the “cardboard wind tunnel”, with a small “wing” and rubber bands, powered by a window fan.   Of course I waited until a couple of days before the class to make it, but I made it, and of course the damn little thing wouldn’t flutter.  Add washers (mass) to leading edge, trailing edge, more, less, nothing.   So I decided to work in the “test, analyze, and fix” conundrum and go with what I had.

I contacted the host (here comes the technology) and was assured that there would be a projector, a screen, and a laptop with proper cabling, and all I needed to do was bring the presentation on the stick.  Error number one:  “Okay Fine”.  So I loaded up the MOMSTER with the assorted props and drove over to the school.  With some help, I unloaded the stuff in the howling wind, navigated the security at the office and proceeded to the class room.

The “students” were already there, absorbed in conversation, cell phones, and their snacks.  Okay I’ll hurry… where’s the projector?  “Um, we can’t seem to find one”.  Yikes!  My host offered his laptop, thinking maybe we could “gather round” the screen.  Well, the video clips are pretty small to begin with.. do you have sound? “I can crank up the internal speakers”.  About this time a school person showed up with a projector, “borrowed” from another source.  Great.....  Whoops!! The laptop cabling isn’t compatible with the projector.  Teacher who owned room offered her laptop (students remained remarkably unconcerned),  and finally hooked it up, slides projected and we began.. “Okay kids, Mr. Moody is going to begin”.

A few of the kids wrested their attention from whatever they were doing and looked my way.  Did a little promo on being an engineer and then launched into the flutter stuff.  I started out with the famous quote from the Air and Space Magazine from 1987:  “When the flutter guys started talking to their bosses, everybody else just sort of looked at the ceiling”; which has remained true to this day.  Believe me.

I got them back with the video of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and then clicked into some of the wind tunnel model clips, which resolutely refused to run on the computer.  Some link didn’t hook up or there wasn’t a plug-in installed on the machine.  Finally, by transferring the slide back to the ill cabled laptop, the thing played but it was about the size of a postage stamp.  Very few got out of their chairs to come and look at it, but there was one young man who was interested, so maybe one benefit.

After staggering through the remainder of the slides, we set up the wind tunnel and demonstrated the lack of fluttering cardboard wing.  There was some interest in that, and the same young man fiddled with the washers. A lesson in life, things don't always work out!

About that time it was time for them to leave, so I wrapped up the session extolling the benefits of education, no matter what you choose to do.  Maybe that one kid….

I can’t really blame the kids, a subject that was beyond their experience, terms they never heard, and bouncing back and forth between laptop, screen and general thrashing.  The subject was tough enough, but the technology always gets you.  How hard is it for all these components to talk to each other??

Sigh..

when i got home, you can be I was ready to

DFD

and the ritual prelude (think clinking glass noises)