3 ms·

I sort of agree, but I think you're too harsh. Having taught phase diagrams to freshmen, very smart freshmen, as with everything else it comes down to familiari

I sort of agree, but I think you're too harsh. Having taught phase diagrams to freshmen, very smart freshmen, as with everything else it comes down to familiarity and practice. I tend not to look down on people for not knowing stuff they're not familiar with, I'm sure they could all get it with someone who can actually guide them through it. But I do appreciate a simple, inexpensive design of course. But they're so hard for people to make if they don't understand the deep details of everything in the system, and once the knowledge is split between two brains then it's a lot harder to spot inconsistencies. But I also can hardly blame people for throwing in the towel on deeply researching the sheer vastness of the McMaster, Swagelok, and Digikey catalogs. Much less ASTM standards or the ASM handbook. I work on building a lot of surprisingly easy things like electromagnets and battery charging circuits and low noise filters and precision temperature controllers and such like that in-house because it's shocking how bad and expensive stuff made commercially usually is. Just yesterday I was replacing a flow sensor in a water pump to water cool a vibrating scanning magnetometer my office mate designed. It's a fun line of work. I also do stuff on the side as a consultant along these lines to scratch the "let's make something people can use in industry" itch (http://neltnerlabs.com/ http://neltnerlabs.com/). But my biggest pipe dream for the past 9 years has been using AI tools to close the loop around synthesis and testing and predicting properties for heterogeneous catalysts. Equipment is a key part of that dream, sadly Google was uninterested (no ads?) and I've only ever found a handful of companies working on it all of which don't quite seem to get just how big a deal it is almost certain to be. At least the national labs are catching on.

Gibbon1 7y ago
> but I think you're too harsh. What I found when I took thermo which is where you learn this stuff. Nothing really prepares you for the basic concepts before hand. So it's a steep hill to climb. I think some students get through it via rote memorization. Which means they don't actually understand it. I had to retake the first semester because I got a C-. Which was likely for the best. I also think that thermo is somehow very deeply connected to how the universe actually works. And the next step down is a doozy. So it's difficult to explain it in terms of something familiar.
- neltnerb 7y ago
  I was super lucky that they were taught in freshman chemistry. It made it more familiar seeming later on I'm sure. I agree about thermo, it has an unexpected amount of symmetry. It wasn't until my third time taking a thermo course that I think I really started to get it. I had a professor that I just straight up asked "why?" and his response was "because sometimes we want to know numbers that are hard to measure so we come up with ways to represent them using things that are easy to measure". That is by a wide margin the most practically coherent reasoning for the importance of thermo I've ever gotten, and suddenly all the seemingly arbitrarily PDE manipulation made perfect sense. Although I think the basics like "what is entropy" are pretty generally useful regardless of if you ever touch the PDEs or free energy equations.
  - selimthegrim 7y ago
    Differential forms in thermo can be an eye opener
fuzzfactor 7y ago
I don't want to be harsh, I admire and want to recognize the creative designer. I enjoy guiding people through unfamiliar things which I have experimented with, it's good to see the diverse ways to grasp the same fundamental concept. Some students are quicker than some degreed engineers. You seem like a person that could make an outstanding collaborator, building systems unique to the direction of the project. I'm glad you put your website here, I'll pick up the phone and give your company a call, there's not a more promising, businesslike way. I like instruments also, and have more than one. Testing pays the bills, see the message for the acetone user. When retired it might be good to build some robotic type stuff, maybe in a capitalist venture to overcome financial limitations. Or looks like things would be fine without any equipment, helping companies negotiate the byzantine ASTM process alone instead, just been invited to join the emerging cannabis committee as an independent voting member. That's only about testing, but extraction operators might best benefit from more supercritical ability on their side, you could surely consider this yourself now since it's very uncommon to have experience safely handling this type equipment, especially as a researcher on an experimental basis. Haven't done EOR in years and this time it could be CBD oil. Anyway, presenting some findings on heavy petroleum oils to my traditional ASTM committee shortly, they want to get it into the book as soon as possible because it could save operators millions across the board. Started to meet with some AI people just over a month ago too, inviting them to the lab to see firsthand (& smell) the kinds of crude oil they have been modeling about, some engineers for the first time.
- neltnerb 7y ago
  Yeah, I have the deepest respect for the people who do a lot of AI. I took Ng's online course and know that I don't know a ton but I'm more a "learn the basics, read papers after that" kind of person so I just started trying to replicate papers after that a bit. Now my problem is mostly that I just don't have the energy to scour the research journals and books to put together datasets worth training with (for heterogeneous catalyst performance). Same as everyone I guess. The algorithms don't seem that bad, albeit obviously I want to run it past some friends that do it before claiming anything since I know I'll do it badly and just not know, so maybe in a perfect world it's just a matter of needing more data. I honestly think it will work because I with a human brain can look at trends in catalyst manufacturing methods and composition and guess at least reasonably locally what changes will do. The parameter space is just too big between atomic composition, preparation methods, support acidity, surface area, etc etc etc. I think honestly a computer could do it because it feels like a problem of fitting the data in my head enough to model it beyond super locally. But every time I try to improve a catalyst I succeed, which I think says more about how poorly optimized we are today than it says about my cleverness -- literally almost any random change is likely one that is a variable no one has tried yet. It's an awesomely open feeling field, and more exciting now that biomolecules are getting thrown into the mix from fermentation facilities.

Gibbon1 7y ago

> but I think you're too harsh. What I found when I took thermo which is where you learn this stuff. Nothing really prepares you for the basic concepts before hand. So it's a steep hill to climb. I think some students get through it via rote memorization. Which means they don't actually understand it. I had to retake the first semester because I got a C-. Which was likely for the best. I also think that thermo is somehow very deeply connected to how the universe actually works. And the next step down is a doozy. So it's difficult to explain it in terms of something familiar.

neltnerb 7y ago
I was super lucky that they were taught in freshman chemistry. It made it more familiar seeming later on I'm sure. I agree about thermo, it has an unexpected amount of symmetry. It wasn't until my third time taking a thermo course that I think I really started to get it. I had a professor that I just straight up asked "why?" and his response was "because sometimes we want to know numbers that are hard to measure so we come up with ways to represent them using things that are easy to measure". That is by a wide margin the most practically coherent reasoning for the importance of thermo I've ever gotten, and suddenly all the seemingly arbitrarily PDE manipulation made perfect sense. Although I think the basics like "what is entropy" are pretty generally useful regardless of if you ever touch the PDEs or free energy equations.
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  Differential forms in thermo can be an eye opener

fuzzfactor 7y ago

I don't want to be harsh, I admire and want to recognize the creative designer. I enjoy guiding people through unfamiliar things which I have experimented with, it's good to see the diverse ways to grasp the same fundamental concept. Some students are quicker than some degreed engineers. You seem like a person that could make an outstanding collaborator, building systems unique to the direction of the project. I'm glad you put your website here, I'll pick up the phone and give your company a call, there's not a more promising, businesslike way. I like instruments also, and have more than one. Testing pays the bills, see the message for the acetone user. When retired it might be good to build some robotic type stuff, maybe in a capitalist venture to overcome financial limitations. Or looks like things would be fine without any equipment, helping companies negotiate the byzantine ASTM process alone instead, just been invited to join the emerging cannabis committee as an independent voting member. That's only about testing, but extraction operators might best benefit from more supercritical ability on their side, you could surely consider this yourself now since it's very uncommon to have experience safely handling this type equipment, especially as a researcher on an experimental basis. Haven't done EOR in years and this time it could be CBD oil. Anyway, presenting some findings on heavy petroleum oils to my traditional ASTM committee shortly, they want to get it into the book as soon as possible because it could save operators millions across the board. Started to meet with some AI people just over a month ago too, inviting them to the lab to see firsthand (& smell) the kinds of crude oil they have been modeling about, some engineers for the first time.

neltnerb 7y ago
Yeah, I have the deepest respect for the people who do a lot of AI. I took Ng's online course and know that I don't know a ton but I'm more a "learn the basics, read papers after that" kind of person so I just started trying to replicate papers after that a bit. Now my problem is mostly that I just don't have the energy to scour the research journals and books to put together datasets worth training with (for heterogeneous catalyst performance). Same as everyone I guess. The algorithms don't seem that bad, albeit obviously I want to run it past some friends that do it before claiming anything since I know I'll do it badly and just not know, so maybe in a perfect world it's just a matter of needing more data. I honestly think it will work because I with a human brain can look at trends in catalyst manufacturing methods and composition and guess at least reasonably locally what changes will do. The parameter space is just too big between atomic composition, preparation methods, support acidity, surface area, etc etc etc. I think honestly a computer could do it because it feels like a problem of fitting the data in my head enough to model it beyond super locally. But every time I try to improve a catalyst I succeed, which I think says more about how poorly optimized we are today than it says about my cleverness -- literally almost any random change is likely one that is a variable no one has tried yet. It's an awesomely open feeling field, and more exciting now that biomolecules are getting thrown into the mix from fermentation facilities.