Applications

So I was figiting with this touchscreen monitor at work, getting it hooked up so the physicians can draw various colourful circles (in the profession, it's called segmentation) around left ventricles to apply Simpson's rule (ie reduce life into rectangles. Add up the rectangles. Simple guessimation at its best). This physician came into the room and started poking around with the MR software. Then he asked me about my background (and so we got into the whole "I'm a engineering student from Waterloo..." routine)...then he did something totally unexpected. He went to google, typed in "electromagnetic spectrum" (I cringed a little) then produced this EM spectrum graphic. Then he asked me to explain it to him. I was like...uhhhh...okay...

So I launched into a discussion about how E = hf...wave-particle duality...photoelectric effect...electron excitation in semiconductors...the Uncertainty principle...and all the other random EM and quantum physics I learned in high school (and forgotten) and university (seriously. quantum physics wasn't built for normal human consumption)...to me, EM physics was just a handful of facts. Something they taught at school. Not much more thoughts after that. But to this physicist, who's apparently never learned any of this (I suppose UK education system doesn't dab in the incomprehensible physics areas), it was like a new world opened. He was asking me questions that I had no answer for (how does one explain that light wavelengths isn't actually...physical?)...then it hit me.

Maybe it is just school mentality. But after a good three years of Waterloo education, I've realized that I've begun to treat physics, a field that I was once facinated with, has become just another topic. Another thing I need to learn. In fact...I've consistently perfered my electives (KIN160, PSYCH101, KIN255, BIOL273...and now pending SYDE573) over my core engineering courses...why? It's different. It's fresh. It's new. It's cool...

Campus Challenge 2008 was last weekend. It was alright. To the people who asked how it was, my typical reply was "good reflection time"...and it was. As I sat there, listening to the speakers rant and the Bible study (was totally hardcore. The sheer amount that Al Anderson knew was amazing), it reminded me to start reading again. But as I picked up my Bible...I realized that perhaps, just a little, I've applied to this same mentality. As we talked about Acts...Romans...the only thought was to pour out knowledge. Thus underlining the gap between theory and application.

I remember back in high school, I used to have non-nonsensical arguments with people applying for the Sciences. The argument was...without engineers, scientists are useless, as it is engineers that make their work meaningful (ie, taking the theories and making it practical). Ironic then, that an engineer would forget how to apply the practicality, the application that is Christian living.


On another note, here are my current identified perks at work:
- Half off on crutches (anyone broke their legs recently?)
- 99% of erasing my TTC metropass every time I step into the 1.5T magnet room... and no, I didn't actually do it. I almost did. Oops.
- Windows in my office. Windows!