Samin Jahan

Professor Jamison

FIQWS 10108

26 November 2018

Exploring Mechanical and Electrical Engineering

Introduction and Framing of the Problem:

I plan to tackle the challenge of deciding whether to major in mechanical or electrical engineering as soon as possible. This decision is part of designing my way through during my years at the City College of New York. In my exploratory essay I was exploring electrical engineering and physics. Although I’ve ruled out physics as a potential major, I now want to explore mechanical engineering and more of electrical engineering. I believe in both majors, I will enjoy it enough to not leave it. However, I will take advantage of the opportunity to decide among the majors which I will perform better in. I will do this by prototyping both college majors, mechanical engineering (ME) and electrical engineering (EE) and providing evidence of it in this paper.

Reflecting Upon Myself:

Looking through my good times journal I noticed my life is involved in mainly work instead of play. Play would show the things I do on my free time that could reflect what I enjoy, instead I am going to school, doing homework, shopping or any other necessities. My possible explanation for this would be the transition from high school to college. College has given me the responsibility of managing my time by spending less time in class and more time by myself. That’s why I spend a lot more time doing the necessities than I should.

            The obvious solution would be to work on managing my time, which I am working on. However, I also started to think back in time during my high school years and what I would do on my free time. Not only did I search through my brain, but I also looked through old documents, emails, downloads, YouTube history, applications, binders. Interestingly I was exploring many different activities back in my high school years. What I found was that I explored coding, 3D rendering, replacing electronics and phone parts to sell for profit, fixing old non-working technology to start them up, troubleshooting software issues on phones and computers, science research, networking with other science students and scientists, prototyping and building robots, school chess tournaments.

Selection of Major and Design of my College Career:

Looking through the curriculum for mechanical and electrical engineering gave me some insights about what classes I would be expecting for each major. It also gave me an idea that if I were to major in mechanical engineering then possibly, I would minor in electrical engineering. This is because the mechanical engineering curriculum doesn’t offer classes such as Quantum Mechanics for Engineers or Electromagnetism. These are topics that have always interested me, and I wouldn’t want to miss out on.

Internships where I can get an experience of what working on a team feels like would be useful for me and my resume. A particular one that caught my eye was ARUP. It’s an engineering and design company that is involved in many different fields of engineering. They do provide summer internships for majors in mechanical and electrical engineering. Many of their projects are also involved in cities like New York City. Their requirements include a bachelors in an engineering degree and course work of specific topics depending on the major. The curriculum of classes for mechanical and electrical engineering are covered in City College. The internship does not require much hands-on experience but according to them it is preferred. So, I believe I can get those hands-on experience by playing around mechanical or electrical systems at home and participating in extracurricular clubs/activities. If I see opportunities in my earlier years, I will try not to be picky and take them to build myself.

If I participate in competitions such as the robotics one, then in addition to the skills I will develop, travelling over states will help me develop more connections. Developing connections with others I believe would be a big part of how I will be able to explore other career opportunities.

I always enjoyed reading about theoretical physics, sub atomic particles, and fields. So, I thought electrical engineering would be a good choice because it has an electricity and magnetism branch. After learning that electrical engineers have better capabilities at visualizing without a geometric/spatial picture, I figured maybe it’s not so much for me. Because most of the activities that I’ve done and enjoyed, involved a picture I can refer to in order to develop or solve a problem. So, my set of skills are more useful to mechanical engineering. But most of my reading shows that my interest falls into electrical more than mechanical.

Looking at my chooser chart, whether you eyeball it or add up the dots and divide by the triangles, it is clear that mechanical engineering is a more sensible approach given the criteria’s. However, the chooser chart doesn’t clarify the value magnitude of each criteria. Although electrical was lower in most categories, it had a better score for topics of interest. And this criterion is greatly valued because it is one of the fundamentals of any major and career.

Mechanical engineers’ discipline is to apply the law of physics in a system, analyze those systems, maintain them, designing, and manufacturing. Whereas the core disciplinary knowledge of electrical engineers is to apply the knowledge of electricity and magnetism to systems, analyze them, and make electronic systems more efficient.

Investigation of a Job:

When searching for job titles related to someone with a mechanical engineering degree, the one that most interested me was nuclear engineering. I was inspired to search for this when I entered the plasma physics laboratory at Columbia University back in high school. I noticed there was a lot of combinations between mechanical and electrical system at the lab and on the nuclear reactors.

Nuclear engineers apply the principles of nuclear science and are concerned with the use of nuclear energy and waste. If nuclear engineering did involve mechanical and electrical knowledge, I wanted to know specifically what. So, searching through O*Net Online I found, “Design or develop nuclear equipment, such as reactor cores, radiation shielding, or associated instrumentation or control mechanisms” is one of the tasks. Creating a shield could involve both the technology of mechanical and electrical system because a physical material must be made as the shield and these shields are mainly magnetic in order confine the radiation within the reactor. “Conduct tests of nuclear fuel behavior and cycles or performance of nuclear machinery and equipment to optimize performance of existing plants”, is another task that could involve both fields because a nuclear reactor is an electro-mechanical system.

These tasks usually require a team to accomplish because of time constraint and its complexity. They require a relatively high level of knowledge and interactions in all three categories of data, people, and things. These tasks fall within level 4 and 5A (Analyze & Innovating) for data because, of lots of mathematical applications and testing their real-world applications on physical forms. A level 2 (Exchanging Information) for people because, it is a teamwork to improve the whole nuclear system. It is not likely for one person to hold all the knowledge and skills for this big task. A level 3A and 3B (Precision Working & Setting Up) for data because, the nuclear reactor needs the math and science physically applied to it. Although robots and mechanics do a lot, some small objects need to be assembled or maintained by the engineers. They spend most of their time with data and computers to monitor the system without being close to it, 30% people, 50% data, 20% things.

The knowledge sub-category at O*Net did include knowledge of mechanics, computers & electronics, physics, and engineering & technology, is required. Almost all engineers have a bachelors in this degree which is good for me because I plan to go up to a doctoral degree.

Nuclear engineering compared to aerospace or automotive engineering, is better because it isn’t dominated by mechanical engineering only. However, the con is I would most likely have to take higher level chemistry classes for the study of chemicals used and the nuclear waste. This job field could possibly be a solution to me because mechanical and electrical degrees are widely accepted into the nuclear field.

Design Thinking Process:

I’ve always wondered how 4 years of college with mainly class time and very little experience time can give students a somewhat professional degree. I believed in the dysfunctional belief “Your degree determines your career” (Burnet & Evans x). Later I learned that “Three-quarters of all college grads don’t end up working in a career related to their majors” (Burnet & Evans x). I learned that college majors are broad and after 4 years you narrow it own. You will most likely need more years of studying and more years of experience to get a professional job in what the major is.

Before I started this course, I thought the solution to deciding my major was one step. After starting to read the book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett & David Evans, I saw my solution was also a dysfunctional belief, “I should already know where I’m going” (Burnett & Evans 17). I never stopped to look at where I am at and was trying to jump straight to a single solution. This is where I performed like a beginning designer. By treating my problem as a well-defined problem and believing that understanding the problem is easy and straightforward. Later in the course I started to act like an informed designer by understanding the problem and figuring out key issues related to my problem. Instead trying to figure out solutions to it I would investigate why the problem is occurring in the first place.

My research skill level was in between beginning and informed. The functional job analysis of the senior project and a nuclear engineering was more of an informed designer approach. However, I need to do more of them or different types of research such as physically seeing these tasks. YouTube videos may be a good option or joining a club and doing a task analysis of the seniors/juniors at work.

I did perform like an informed designer when it comes to generating ideas. I attended many events to speak with engineering job holders to hear any tips they would have for me. I did a couple of odyssey plans to come up with possible plans for the next 5 years in college. After my first odyssey plan, I created different ones to see if I can combine the pros of each previous one. I did mind mapping to pour out any ideas from brain to find any leads for myself. I will constantly be generating different ideas to my problem using what I learned from my researches. I find the best way to generate ideas would be to talk to someone who knows my situation well. Or someone who will sit down and listen to me. Because often it’s hard to develop different ideas when you’ve been thinking the same way repeatedly.

One step I took towards weighing my option is creating the career chooser chart and assigning a value to each criterion in the chooser chart. The odyssey plan was also a weighing technique.

The next steps I would take would be to shadow a senior student as either an EE or ME major. This way I can get physical information of what I will do for the next few years. I will also continue to prototype interviews and experiences at clubs.