Environmentally Friendly Metal Processing

Metal processing, forming, shaping, heat treating, and other processes that take a chunk of rock and make them into your car frame, lawn chair, nail, bolt, watch, computer frame, refrigerator, and others are not exactly environmentally friendly. This is something I struggle with. When I wrote It's All About Energy in January it was in part my response to the energy demands to create a product.

While my manufacturing experience is limited, what I have seen, and what you can see on YouTube or the History Channel are not exactly energy friendly processing. Watch the forging process in action in Asia. The problem is that things need to be heated up to very hot temperatures. In the case of steels this is 800-1100 Celsius or 1500 to 2000 Fahrenheit.  Keep in mind that heavy things and larger things take more energy to heat up. So the main problem in my mind is heating this stuff up.

Some processes, like carburizing, can be heated electrically in a vacuum and thus save the trouble of heating up lots of air or burning hydrocarbons. Heating processes that take place at one atmosphere (open to the air) are more energy intensive because of the air that has to be heated up. Additionally, heat is often created by burning oil. So there is an exhaust component as well that leaves all sorts of carbon dioxide and other chemicals to be cleaned up.

Induction heating holds a whole lot of promise. It requires a whole bunch of energy, but compared to burning things can be more environmentally friendly. Now energy that we typically use to run our electronics comes from power plants that are burning things. Fortunately, this is not always the case. Wind energy, solar energy, tidal energy, wave energy, hydroelectricity, and hopefully fusion someday present the possibility of nearly zero emission electricity. Since all of those energy releasing systems first need to be produced and manufactured there will always be some emissions that occur in the product lifestyle. The hope being that we can have emissions for all aspects of our life that are less than the Earth's ability to use those emissions through photosynthesis and other processes.

What Is It I Do?

The title of my M.S. thesis was Modeling of Heat Treating Processes for Transmission Gears. My M.S. degree is Materials Science and Engineering. There are Process Engineer jobs that are like assembly line process engineering jobs, like an Industrial or Management Engineer would do. There are Material Management jobs that are similar. So even though it says one thing, which uses a word that I like to think my education and experience "own" it is not at all what I am trained to do!

A person recently recommended that I try to find out where some particular steel was made, when I realized that people don't really know what a materials scientist and engineer does. Without reading any description of what a materials science and engineering major supposedly does I am going to describe what I am trained to do, in order of what I feel makes me more marketable.

1. Create and run complex computer heat treating simulations. I can of course do mechanical stress analysis simulations, in fact my first day using the simulation I did a stress analysis simulation. It took me more than a year to understand heat treating simulations enough to get a decent result.
2. Understand and plan heat treating. This, like the simulations, is because it was directly related to my thesis. About 1/3 of the cost of most gears I believe is due directly to the heat treating. It is similar for other heat treated parts. 
3. Understand material failures. You might call some things weaknesses or imperfections but to people like me they are failures. I understand how that happens, even on an atomic level.
4. On top of all of that I have a degree in Aerospace Engineering, if it flies, goes into space, flows, or involves a turbine I understand it.
5. I feel that I present well. Both of my most recent interviews have involved myself giving a presentation. I was told this summer by distinguished University of Colorado at Boulder professor that I teach well. 

I know I am not the best in the world at anything, except maybe my Abaqus Bottom-up Mesh Tutorial, but when I hear stories or see people who are clearly not great at what they do it makes me cringe. What is my problem?

The Last Laptop You Will Ever Own

The recent release of the Macbook Air has a many technophiles ogling. Myself included. My current 12 inch Powerbook G4 is six and a half years old. My laptop has survived over six years, and chances are I will resell it and someone else will use it for a few years. This is not terribly surprising considering the most complicated programs I have ever run on my computer are Matlab, a Halo demo, remotely accessing a server, and video encoding. Now there are remote desktop applications, such as iTeleport, for iPhone and iPad so non-phone-based applications can be used. You can use your computer from your phone. There is also a sweeping range of applications for mobile platforms that enable creation of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, gaming, video editing, mathematical computing, reading books, and location (GPS) based services. That is to say, I do not need to have a mobile computer.

What does the future hold? Smaller, lighter, better battery life, and probably flexible or at least foldable. Imagine something the size of a magazine, just a flexible and heavy, with the capability of your current computer. Or something the size of your phone that folds to the size of a magazine, or even a laptop and is as capable as your computer.

Some are touting the Macbook Air as a possible computer for light-duty users. That is somewhat of a farce or 90% of computer users can be considered light-duty users. My six year old computer was strong enough to do 95% of what I wanted it to do the last five and a half years as an engineering student. For most of the people that use computers a fast processor, huge amounts of hard drive storage and a whole bunch of gigs of RAM is more than they need. I have 768 megabytes of RAM in my current computer and I have used my computer more than most.

Now programs do become more unwieldy over time. I have a program called TextEdit on my computer, which makes very basic documents, like 1992 era word processing. It is much smaller and takes less processing power than Microsoft Word, but it doesn't do nearly as much. So over time programs will require more memory and faster processors. That being said for 90% of users the ability to use the Internet, Microsoft Office, listen to music, watch videos, edit photos and video, and play a few games are all they want or need. I feel that buying a top-of-the-line or very capable laptop now that will last the next five years may be the last laptop many people will ever own.

From the Moon to a Mine in Chile to Mars?

Watching the first miners come out of the mine in Chile after being trapped underground since August 5th was interesting. As I write this only two miners have reached the top with 31 still to go. One of the commentators equated this moment with Neil Armstrong landing on the Moon. In large part because it was a technological achievement with lots of media coverage. I also read that NASA was providing advice and some health and medical equipment to the rescue effort. When it comes to putting human bodies in strange situations safely NASA knows what it is doing.

Every time someone compares something to the Moon landings I feel a little disillusioned. We landed on the Moon in 1969. It is 2010. What have we done in the 41 years since then? Okay, okay, we have made huge improvements as far as environmental regulations like clean air and water. We have advanced technology far beyond what most people even know how to utilize. My iPhone has more capability than a fifteen year old computer. We have done other things as well, such as address sustainability, efficiency, quality of life, disease, and of course crash a few economies. While all of that is very nice and that work is tremendously important, it does not inspire in the same way as exploration.

I really am a modern day explorer. "Had I only been born a generation or two earlier." It is the lament of every explorer. They have all felt at some point like they had to invent a challenge to overcome. The challenge of the Moon, circumnavigating the Earth, or climbing the highest mountain are all very legitimate and easily defined. They have also all been done. Next it becomes about doing the challenge in the best style. Which is an inspirational attitude yet fundamentally the challenge has already been completed.

I do not know why I want to do something no one has done before but I know that I do. This comes in many forms. My run on the Wonderland Trail in September was an example of doing something that no one had really done before. Yet it has been run in a much faster time and thousands of people backpack it every year so it was really not something new. As the NASA budget gets reorganized and re-prioritized it seems that the chance that the US will send humans farther into space is low. Our inspiration is so different and esoteric than in the past. Hundreds of years ago it was a new future in the New World. In the early part of the 1900s in the US it was a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage. In the 1940s it was winning a war. In the 1960s it was getting to the Moon. To be honest it seems that the great problems that we are trying to solve in 2010 are things like the economy, national debt, healthcare, world hunger, clean water, and according the the commercials who would make the best politician.

What I'm trying to say is: let's go to Mars. Why? It would most likely create a number of jobs. We would develop and refine a number of technologies to be more efficient and reliable. It is something inspirational and tangible. It could be profitable. Besides the obvious book and movie deals there is the advertising. NASA and the US government in general has not really tackled this issue yet. For example, astronauts would probably spend most of their time in shorts and short sleeve shirts. Why not get some company to pay millions for the exclusive rights to have astronauts wear their shirts? Or why not put some nice flashy patches or stickers on astronauts space suits for other sponsors? There is also the space ship itself, pens, pencils, computers, watches, food, tools, utensils, and all of that other plain white stuff in a spacecraft that could take stickers. The astronauts, scientists, engineers, and others directly involved in the mission could be contracted for perhaps five years after the mission to make speaking tours, many of which could turn a profit for the government. There is also the merchandise and internet advertising, because I am sure they would blog their way to Mars and back. Why not sell a ton of Mars rocks?

Whoa, that paragraph kind of got away from me. I could talk about space profits for a long time. Anyway, what is next? I do not know.

How to Make Money from Space

This is kind of a vague area. Most people think space is cool and it's nice to hear about the most recent Mars rover but at the end of the day all we hear is how much it costs and not how much was made. So being a rocket scientist I will try to explain through several past examples and possible future scenarios. This post is inspired by the most recent state of the union address and some new goals the president gave to NASA.

First a story that was told to me in my aerospace avionics class by an 80+ year old retired guy. I forget the name of the company or the person but it was my professor's friend. Anyway for the Apollo program they had to use circuit boards and resistors and transistors. At the time the average useful life of the best stuff available was like three days. Apollo missions were up to 12 days. I believe my professor's friend owned a transistor factory. Anyway he was the head of the company and got the contract for the transistors and did those batches by hand. Apparently he had trouble sleeping during the missions because the chance that all of the parts he had cooked in the furnace worked for the whole mission was very low. Fortunately, there was never a problem. So the space program forced engineers to make more reliable components that benefit us today in every electronic device we use.

Nasa has required things that are smaller and lighter, mostly electronic things. They have not always come up with the innovation itself but required that some innovative piece be used. For example, the shuttle landing strip and shuttle tires. The landing strip is, I believe, the flattest landing strip in the world. It is also made of a very rough surface so that it can move water off of it faster than any other "road" in the world. This creates an issue when you have a spacecraft landing at very high speeds on only a handful of tires. The tires for the shuttle had to be very advanced. Things we take for granted in our tires in the teens (2010s) were not really existent 35 years ago when the shuttle was being designed. Now we have wires and many layers and tires that just keep going.

Other inventions they have at least helped create are water filters, cordless tools, and memory foam. NASA has contributed to over 6,300 patents, and you can bet most of them are the useful kind of patents.

We must also remember that communications and weather satellites bring in money directly because of the information that they transmit. Talking on a satellite phone costs around $1.00 per minute, yet tens of thousands of people use satellite phones every year.

Now the future is much more interesting. I can only imagine that the technology innovations will continue to keep coming (unless Apple and Google have a war for the world's technology). However the interesting postulate is about what the future holds. Space tourism? That's a really big question. There are only a few thousand people in the world that can currently afford to go into orbit. There are probably a million or so that can afford to take a flight into "space" at 100km above sea level and enjoy a few uninterrupted minutes of free fall (weightlessness). That is unless we can figure out some way to get to orbit without traditional liquid fuel rockets (yeah... that's not happening this decade) which are very very expensive.

Another possibility is mining. Almost every 90s space video game hinted at mining colonies, as well as Star Wars, Avatar, and other fantasy media content. They were somewhat right. If we can find something (paladium, platinum, uranium, lutetium, and other rare earth elements) on Mars that we run out of on Earth then it may become economical to mine on other celestial bodies.

One somewhat far fetched possibility, yet one that people like me sit around and talk about, is the possibility that Earth by itself is not enough. We have too much waste. What if we could dump it all on Mars for only three times the price of driving it to Michigan? What if all of our mining occurred in space? What if we could terraform Mars (think Dubai meets Army Corp of Engineers) so that it was a giant recycling center. Biodegrading waste and making oxygen, yet still harsh enough that we couldn't live there without spacesuits. How cool would that be to get a three year assignment to Mars? Kind of like the south pole, but it's Mars.

I can't quote a number and say if you pay X you will get Y. Unfortunately, I think that one of the most lucrative aspects of space is the exploration itself. I doubt Columbus, Cortez, Shackelton, Admundsen, or Armstrong will be forgotten soon. So there is always the speaking tours, the book deal, the movie, action figures, conferences and the like. To quote Pawn Stars, "the problem with one of a kind items is that you can't compare it to the last one you sold." I'll translate that to mean you just do not know the end result and the profitable tangents when you try something new.

What is the Problem?

Before you can fix something you have to know what is broke. In my more advanced schooling we did not try to answer a question first, we made sure that we were asking the right question. Two examples...

First, for my MS thesis I was trying to solve a distortion problem during a heat treating process. One of the ways we were trying to quantify the distortion was by measuring the distortion at every step of the process instead of just the beginning and end. It turns out there were some surprises and a large part of the distortion was coming from part of the process that had not been considered a problem before. By asking what the measurements were after that step we were better able to answer the question of how to reduce distortion.

Second, something is wrong with me. The doctor does not know what it is. My X-rays (which I have on a cd on my desk with a .exe file extension I can not open and look for myself because I have a six year old mac) came back clean. The doctor thinks I still have kidney stones. From the reading I have done on the internet that seems likely. A thought occurred recently, could this be stress manifesting itself in my body? I really hope it's just a kidney stone or infection because I don't really know how I am supposed to reduce my stress.

First, define the problem, then address the problem.

How to Acclimate: For Athletes (Part 2 of 2)

In the first part of this series I mentioned a few ways that people could adjust to higher altitude. Today I will suggest some details that help the process move along.

When I say athletes I only mean people doing something physical. That could be a few days of hiking or skiing it doesn't have to be a competitive sport. In my experience at altitude people can often react very negatively to the change in altitude. In fact the only place I have seen people throw up is after the first day of backpacking when they ascended too fast. So all of the suggestions from yesterday stand. Just because you think you are trained better than an average person doesn't mean you can ascend faster. So here are some additional recommendations.

1. Be patient. It takes three weeks before your body produces the extra red blood cells to allow you to transport the limited oxygen. I believe there are other changes as well that occur within the first month so it is important to remember that just because you feel better on day four than day two doesn't mean you are acclimated yet.
2. Don't compare the quality of a workout directly to the same one performed at sea level. In 2002 I was hiking up the north ridge of Mt. Elbert. There is a plateau at about 13,500 feet that is nearly flat and about half of a mile long. It took me an entire hour to walk that half mile. At sea level I could probably crawl a half mile in an hour. What I'm saying is that that half mile at 13,500 feet is not the same as a mile at 500 feet. Comparisons can be made to workouts at altitude and those at sea level but that comparison should also rely on how the workout felt, if it was harder, easier or about the same as something at a lower altitude. Then it is up to the athlete to decide if it felt better or worse, as in where is an ideal training location.
3. Get your rest! Recovery is harder at altitude because there is not enough oxygen to use for repairing your body. After exercise there are micro-tears in your muscles and they heal faster when there is more oxygen available.
4. Eat! I think that it just takes more calories to sustain life at higher altitudes than it does at lower altitudes. This could be because you heart and lungs are working harder to keep you alive. So you may need to consume some extra calories, or end up losing weight.

Pretty simple and pretty effective.

It's All About Energy

Wether watching Star Wars or Back to the Future 2 or any other futuristic movie or television show it's all about energy. Listening to talk about hydrogen fuel cells, global warming, and new wind farms it's all about energy.

I shall explain, and take up a good chuck of your time. First, I'm going to start with how we get energy. Now it more or less all comes from the Sun. Solar power converts the photons (light particles) from the sun into energy through use of layers of photovoltaic material that becomes electrically charged when in the presence of light. Second there is wind energy. Wind is created by the sun heating up sections of the earth more and creating convection currents which is basically warm air and cool air moving in different directions and because of gravity the air doesn't float away into space and thus moves horizontally when it collides with air of a different temperature. Hydroelectric power from from water that is pulled by gravity closer to the center of the earth. Much of that water is carried to higher elevations by rain and slow. Some of it also comes from ground water. How does ground water move uphill you ask? Well, there are probably several mechanisms but the one that sticks out in my mind is the capillary action from trees and plants and the soil itself. Things move from areas of high concentration to areas of low concentration. So the water collects at a low spot but just above that spot imagine that the ground is bone dry and there is a tree slightly uphill. Because the ground is packed so close together a wet piece of dirt beside a dry piece of dirt will create a gradient and some of the water will move to the dry piece of dirt. Now imagine the same concept but a hill side miles long. Too big of a jump you say it doesn't scale up?

Luke: "It's too big."

Yoda: "Size matters not."

How about ethanol and vegetables and other plants? Well they grow by photosynthesis which is another way of saying they use the light energy (the sun) to grow. So biofuel and ethanol and other fuels like that are basically produced from the sun. Although they have to be refined which takes a large amount of energy as well.

How about oil? Oil is thought to be created by organic material (plants and animals) that have been compressed under great pressure to form polymer chains we call oil. That means that we can create oil in a lab (ever heard of synthetic oil?) by replicating the conditions thought to produce oil in nature.

Then there is fission and fusion power. Fission is traditional nuclear reactor design and the atomic bombs they dropped on Japan. It consists of really heavy elements getting split into two smaller elements and when that occurs a lot of energy is released. Fusion is basically the bombs that are way bigger and not used in any nuclear power reactor. If we can solve fusion power and put it in a reactor that will give up so much energy. It consists of Hydrogen that is combined to form Helium and released energy when that reaction occurs. However it is so hot it will melt anything we have yet created to hold it in. This is the reaction that we think makes the sun shine.

Secondly there is another problem, besides producing a ton of energy. Containing that energy in a small place. Currently we have a bit of a problem with energy density. It's not exactly a problem because we have never known different but it limits us from flying cars, traveling to Mars in a week, and other science fiction fantasies. While lithium batteries seem so amazing with so much power imagine a battery so powerful the size of your cell phone that you put it in your car and don't have to fuel up ever again.

Now that example is a leap from where we are now but the world energy consumption is increasing. From about 5 terawatts in 1965 to 13 terawatts in 2006. Think about the energy usage in your house. Fifty years ago who had more than one television set? Twenty years ago who used the computer and internet as much as we use it today? I see no way that our energy usage can honestly be reduced. As people begin to acquire huge screens and touch capable screens and have more of them the power required is just going to go up. As the world food supply becomes incapable of handling the world population will we start farming underground or in buildings with artificial lights?

As the world progresses to easily renewable energy sources like solar and wind anther problem is how to store lots of energy for times when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow? This goes back to energy density and also the efficiency of storing and then extracting that energy.

I feel that in the future energy is going to be a very big issue. Someone who controls energy can have clean water, electricity, heat or air conditioning, computers, internet access, transportation, food, and other communication. Basically the more energy we have the more we can do. Of course the converse of that is the more we want to do the more energy we need.

The future is going to be interesting.

My Thesis Presentation (Defense)

Here is how it went down yesterday: I shaved and showered and shampooed (twice) then made my way to WPI. I went over my presentation one more time and headed over to the room to get everything set up. Everything was working out better than I expected. Everyone was being really helpful. They opened the room and the Facilities guy moved some chairs out and found a table cloth for the food at the back. The ME secretary brought a poinsettia in for the table as well. Then I took my suit jacket off before anyone arrived and I realized later that I went to the trouble of wearing a formal jacket and no one saw me wear it!

Before I started presenting a number of my undergrad friends showed up. I think it was a nice benefit for them. I would have liked to go to a thesis presentation when I was an undergrad just to see how it works. My advisor got up and started talking about how I shaved and stuff. Then I presented for I think 19 minutes. Then people started asking questions. Most of the questions I either expected or felt comfortable answering. It was a bit odd because one of the members of my committee was on the phone. So after a few initial questions the questions got deeper. The kind of questions I expected them to ask when the general audience left the room. The other committee members followed suit.

After 30 minutes of questions and discussion everyone left. They gave me one comment about how to modify my report by separating some sections. They complemented my writing but not my organization, which is exactly word for word the feedback I got on my Janzen Gear business plan. Then we spent ten minutes talking about Sergey Brin and Google, my ice axe, and Tiger Woods. I was speechless because I was expecting harder questions like, "Do you think you deserve this?"

Then it was over they said I did well and I proceeded to not get much of anything done the rest of the day. Well, I did have a fundamental change in my business strategy. I'll talk about that tomorrow.

Copenhagen

First, I just presented my thesis and it went really well. I had a bunch of tough questions at the end because in reality this project is more than a master's thesis. I'll write about it in the next few days but I'm going to talk about something else today.

Global warming. In Copenhagen they are having a big multinational meeting to set limits on emissions for the future. A corollary to this is the money that rich nations will give to poor nations to reduce emissions or for that matter how rich nations are going to reduce their emissions. There are a lot of protesters basically saying that the governments aren't trying hard enough. In fact over 1000 protestors have been arrested during this summit.

Global warming is something that I am passionate about. It didn't start with me caring about global warming. It started because I went hiking and backpacking in the mountains. I saw the wilderness first hand and learned about invasive species and ecosystems and the effect of hot dry summers on northeastern New Mexico. The moral of the story is that forrest are being killed by beetles because of the dry climate the trees are more vulnerable and there have been no fires to thin the forests because we have put out all forrest fires the past 100 years.

The problem is that the problem is not life threatening right now and the solution is not cheap. Well, I guess riding your bike and walking instead of driving is cheaper. Also, buying less stuff is cheaper than buying a bunch of stuff that takes fossil fuels to process. Unfortunately, buying a car that doesn't need gas is nearly impossible and not economical. But what is economical? How do you quantify an investment in life? I wrote about this in my ebook. Who thinks about the world in 2100? There is a real chance that my kids (assuming I have some) will be alive in 2100. There is no way my 23 mpg van will be around then, except in a museum or classic car show. I think in 30 years less than 100 mpg will look fuel inefficient.

The world now is about 1 degree Celsius above where we were the last 2000 years on average. Now that was a generally cold time so maybe we are only a half degree above a nice average but we have upped the temperature rather rapidly.

Suggestions:

1. Solar panels on every upward facing man made surface. Roofs, cars, even roads.
2. Wind turbines in places where people won't complain about how they look. First I think they look cool. Second there are a lot of places miles and miles from "population centers" where land is cheap and wind blows. For example, the oceans, the 300 miles East of the front range of the Rock Mountains, Canada, Alaska, Siberia, Australia, or even Antarctica.
3. Capturing rain water for whatever use. Use it in toilets or purify it and use it for everything. In stead of trying to get rid of the water on your roof how about try to keep it? When wells go dry it will be a much better alternative.
4. Spend one minute a day plugging your car in. People that live in the far north have to plug heaters into their cars at night to keep the battery warm. Why not plug the whole car in?
5. Recycle as much as you can. Not everything recycles well. Plastic is kind of depressing with only 25-40% of the plastic actually getting recycled. Aluminum is great! It takes like 5% of the energy to recycle Aluminum as it does to extract it from ore.
6. Globalize some things. This is already happening but it could be much better. Is there a problem with tech support in India? It probably only depends on how well you understand their English.
7. Localize more things. How often do you need bananas? Where does that jacket come from or how many countries did it go through before it you put it on?

The problem is that these things cost money. They cost money today. They also don't match the current capabilities. I mean I could build you a solar powered car that drove 50 miles a day just about every day that you never have to plug in. But let me guess, you want an unlimited range, like a gasoline car. While that barrier has been conquered by a remote control airplane we aren't very close at the level of a practical car yet.

Will we figure it out before the arctic glaciers flood the world? Will we learn before a heat wave kills crops and famine kills millions? I don't know. As a master of science most of what I know is that I don't know things.

Masters Thesis Presentation

I am presenting my Masters Thesis, Modeling of Heat Treating Processes for Transmission Gears, Monday morning at 9 AM in Higgins 102 at WPI.

If you are in the area and have 45 minutes of free time come by and watch. You will probably learn something. There will also be coffee and some sort of pastry.

If you are wondering what I am going to talk about it's all in the title. Basically, I have spent the past year and a half learning how to make finite element models and heat treat them. All sorts of crazy things happen when you heat up and cool down steel at different rates and add carbon to the mix. Before you know it you have a $50,000 gear that likes to turn into a potato chip. So I have worked on simulating the process and trying to have the exact distortion results in my simulations that have been measured on the gears.

Making it your own

I have been spending a lot of time recently writing things that have predefined templates. My thesis, which isn't so bad after all, my business plan, which is so bare it is kind of funny, a website, and of course my ebook. People often suggest that you need to make something representative of yourself. However, they don't tell you what that means. I'm going to try to answer that, at least for my life.

First off take my business plan. I am an engineer. It's what I do and I'm not half bad at it. Unfortunately, it's called a business plan and I am more than half bad at business. I want to describe the company and how it will survive but many of the things I want to say are from my personal experience. There are no formulas, I am aware of, that say why it is a good idea to go to ice climbing festivals to sell more ice axes.

The solution: write what I think needs to be in my business plan. Write it so that someone who doesn't know me can understand it. Which is to say that in the business plan I am saying that I am the one and only employee with experience engineering, mountaineering, and running and not so much with business, law, marketing and stuff. If someone wants to invest they should know my strengths and weaknesses.

Second take my thesis. Describe what I can stand behind. Everything else is left out. It turns out my summary is less than a page, as of now. A year and a half of long days in front of my computer screen analyzing finite element results in bright orange, yellow, green, and blue. Scrolling through thousands and thousands of lines of code to find that one misspelled word or comma or wrong number and I have less than a page to say.

The solution: besides an awesome literature review and background that describes most of what I learned in the last year and a half I can say a few things my simulations demonstrated. That is the key, being able to say something. I have been to a number of masters and doctorate thesis' presentations and I have learned when it comes to basic sciences advances happen slowly. A person can work on a project for years and at the end have a 25 minute presentation describing the difference between two sample groups. It is not that a doctorate degree or masters degree means any less now that I know what it takes to get one. In fact I respect the degrees that much more. Many of the most powerful discoveries in science can be described in ten minutes once you understand all of the background.

Finally, take my fun, like running, climbing, going to Pakistan... I am Isaiah Janzen not someone else. I can not live my life trying to achieve physical feats that other people accomplished.

The solution: I have my own unique set of goals. Some of them are probably the same as other people but the combination of all of them, I would assume, is unique. Top athletes try to innovate their sports by taking it to a new level. I just want to say 'this is what I did, it was fun, and my life is better because of it'.

So go out and make it your own. It doesn't have to be different, but it will be.

Knowing a Failure

As my time as a masters graduate student winds to a close I have to reflect on everything I have done. That means writing the summary to my thesis. While trying to do that the last few weeks I hit a huge mental road block. All I could think about or write about were the many things I had done wrong. The several hundreds of simulations that inevitably ended with nothing worth writing about. As I sat there trying to figure out the purpose of it all I realized that I did learn some things worth mentioning. No I didn't solve the problem. I did find several contributing factors, none of which add up to the whole, but corrected would definitely make a difference.

In all those failures and what I consider semi-failures I see now that even in something that I used to think was so simple (metallurgy) is actually very complex and we still don't have all the answers. It can be very humbling to do research. You start out with grandiose plans and at the end it can be a little depressing what is actually accomplished. On the other hand, even accomplishing something small from scratch is a huge victory. Scientists, you have my respect.

I have learned, even in those failures where you feel it is a loss and a waste, there is learning to be had. That is very important. No one in the world will have all of the same failures that you do. That means your learning curve is different than everyone else in the world. I think that means that some day you will be able to solve a problem that no one else in the world has solved. Maybe you have already solved unique problems like that. Maybe I'm totally wrong.

Our bodies are not typical engines

We (in the running community) sometimes liken our bodies to a car talking about fuel efficiency and maximum power or speed. Well that's not entirely correct. Our body has several different metabolic processes that can occur simultaneously. Specifically aerobic and anaerobic respiration. Additionally, and I'm hazy on this because I haven't taken any biochem in awhile, our bodies convert fat to glucose or something like that so that when we are working aerobically we are burning both strait up glucose and glucose from fat. Take that a step farther so that we need a little bit of anaerobic respiration to do whatever we are doing. So now we are burning everything we have fat, glucose, and more glucose. Now the body's supply of glucose (from glycogen) is limited. This is why in marathoning the "wall" is so famous. The distance of a marathon is short enough that people can try to run hard the whole way and it is long enough that you can't run hard the whole way. So many runners get into the 20+ mile range and hit the wall because they ran out of sugar and now their body is forced to burn the glucose from fat which takes a little longer to metabolize. The problem is that while you can "run" on fat as long as you can stay awake it does not provide as much energy "quickly" as sugar (glucose). This applies to just about every exercise not just running. Although, lower intensities (walking), activities with frequent rests (sports involving whistles), or eating all contribute to making it possible to do those for long periods of time. Our bodies are more like a tribrid that will change metabolism depending on the exertion.

A few other comments on metabolisms:

• Before breakfast you have less sugar in your system so you burn up to 3x as much fat than later in the day after you start eating.
• I have about 11 pounds of fat and thus 38,500 calories of fat fuel in me, in theory enough to run well over 300 miles continuously, now, if I wanted.
• I have hit the wall in the 400, 800, 5000, 10,000, and a number of 15+ mile long runs, notably an 18 miler in Colorado on Gold Hill. So our bodies are complicated.

Surface Hardening is Cool

I work heat treating steels. What does this mean? I try to make steels last longer in their application by heating them up and cooling them down. That is my work in a nutshell. A small nutshell.

One way to make steels last longer is to surface harden them. There are several processes the most common being carburizing followed by nitriding. For aluminum anodizing is a surface hardening treatment. The basic process of carburizing is to diffuse carbon into the first millimeter or two of the steel. The carbon diffuses in the iron lattice interstitially and creates a compressive stress on the lattice and thus is harder than the interior of the material. So the very outer layer of the steel is hard and the interior is soft. This is used on everything from gears to bearings to watch casings.

The first time this process was applied commercially was to samurai swords hundreds of years ago. They would diffuse more carbon into the blade of the sword. The blade would be hard and the back would be softer. This allows the blade to bend a little bit when it cuts something. If the whole sword was hard it would shatter if it tried to cut something very hard. If it was all soft the blade would become dull very quickly. The balance of hard and soft steel allows a sharp and resilient sword.

We've come a long way since samurai swords. Probably over 100 parts in your car were surface hardened. The best part is that it is a carbon negative process, kind of. You take carbon, usually from some atmosphere like methane, and diffuse it into the steel where it stays indefinitely.

Run with Less on Your Feet

I've had my share of injuries. Most notably in terms of bad shoes patella-femoral tendonitis (runner's knee), two broken sesamoid bones, and plantar fasciitis. So now that I am training harder in preparation for the olympic marathon trials I have come across several things that I feel I need to incorporate into my training to take me to the next level (or next four levels, cause I have a long way to go). I have learned that shoes can mess me up. When I ran in high school my 20-40 miles a week I just wore some shoe that I had from a sports store. I usually only had one shoe for the whole year. I had no major injury in high school. In fact when I was 15 and 16 I trained for and ran a half marathon in the winter to try and keep in shape. One year I wore a pair of Nike waffles designed for cross country on the whole 13.1 mile pavement and dirt road corse. No injury and no pain that I remember.

Then comes college and I began to up my mileage and take an interest in what went on my feet. First it was what felt good in the store. Then it was what felt good three months later. About that time I was upping my mileage even more and it was what got me through 500 miles without an injury. I used stability shoes for a long time then switched to motion control and stability for the last two years.

We begin in January of 2006 while wearing a cushioning (women's) shoe (NB 1060) from New Balance I developed runner's knee. While clearing that up I moved to stability shoes. I went through two pairs of the NB 766, two NB 767, one NB 768, one ASICS 2110, one Nike I don't know the model, one Saucony Progrid Omni, one Brooks Adrenaline 7, and two Brooks Adrenaline 8. During that time I had a few flats that I used now and then like the NB 901 and Saucony Grid Tangent 2. Unfortunately I tried a more motion control type shoe and once you move up it is hard to move back down. I went through the Mizuno Wave Alchemy 6, Brooks Addiction 8, and Saucony Progrid Stabil. The thing is with that much motion control my feet are forced to move a certain way and I end up with knee pain or hip pain if I run too many miles. Basically the same thing as the cushioning shoe of yesteryear. So recently I moved back down and I'm on my second pair of Saucony Progrid Guide, a stability shoe.

My junior year in an indoor 5000 race I was wearing a pair of Nike Ventulus leopard print spikes and I smashed my sesamoid bone. At least I had never had pain there before but I had several problems after that. I took a month off and did some moderate to light training and ran a decent half marathon that spring. That summer I tried to incorporate barefoot running for the first time by doing strides. Bad mistake. Take that broken sesamoid bone and smash it at five minute mile pace into the ground. It really flared up and the doctor said I should take six months off from running. Yeah, I did that once it won't happen again if I can help it. Instead I put an L shaped patch under my foot in my shoe that took the pressure off. Needless to say I have been quite hesitant to take the shoes off since then. I have since learned that the key is to start by running slow and running short distances.

In my efforts to make my feet stronger the past six weeks I have been trying to do a few runs of about a half mile barefoot at the end of my regular runs. I've worked my way up to a mile. It is kind of humbling because a half mile or one mile is so short. Anyway a strange thing has happened: my stability shoes hurt a little. I have some orthotics in the boots that I wear during the day and they are starting to hurt as well. I have started to run more in flats. I bought a pair of Saucony Grid Fastswitch 3 and after only 40 miles in them I want to wear them all the time. My feet hurt more in shoes now than anytime I can remember. This recent obsession led me to buy two more pairs of flats a few days ago. The experience the last several years going through a pair of $90 shoes every two months makes me want to design and sell a $40 shoe, a flat, that is good enough for 500 miles. We don't need all of this motion control. The problem is that the rubber they use for trainers is designed to last 400-600 miles but in flats the rubber is often only made to last 100-200 miles so you can actually wear through the sole much faster in flats.

Has anybody really good ever gone barefoot you might ask? Yes in fact Abebe Bikila won the 1960 olympic marathon in Rome barefoot on cobblestone streets in 2:15 and set a world record in the process. That's all the information I need. If he could run 2:15 on cobblestones barefoot nearly 50 years ago I should be able to run a 2:18:xx under better conditions. Note: then he set the world record at 2:12 and won another gold medal in 1964 at Tokyo wearing shoes.

So what is my plan? Build slowly to get to the point where I can comfortably run one of my morning runs (3-7 miles) barefoot on the turf or on grass. This process should take two or three months. Right now I am at one mile comfortably barefoot near 8:00 mile pace. I also plan to run much more in flats because they keep the heel low to the ground similar to barefoot running. Wearing a shoe with a higher heel allows the calves and Achilles to get tight. I will still keep a few pairs of my stability shoes around for runs if my feet are tired or for technical trail runs. I would also like to try a pair of Newton shoes if I ever had $150 to spare. I will also continue to do foot stability, flexibility and strengthening exercises several times a week. These I will try to do for the rest of my running career because 20 minutes a week spread out over four "workouts" is completely worth the time that it will save me from being injured.

For more information:

Runner's World article by Amby Burfoot. He talks about Abebe Bikila some.

Barefootrunner.com, it's pretty self explanatory.

Anton Krupicka wrote a good, down to earth, blog post about minimalist running. For those that don't know he came strait out of college and set all sorts of ultrarunning records.

Born to Run by Chris McDougall is about a tribe of Indians in Mexico that run hundreds of miles at all ages nearly without injury. They wear thin sandals to protect their feet from the elements.

Synthetic Chemistry

Synthetic chemistry is the science of making molecules. These are the people making the things that might cure cancer. It is possibly the most universally relentless career to pursue. I have a friend who is at graduate school for his doctorate. He works in a synthetic chemistry lab. The advisor at his lab expects everyone to work 12 hour days six days a week. Fortunately that is one of the more understanding advisors. His friend is in a lab that asks for 14 hours seven days a week. In that world there are no such things as weekends off. In fact there are rumors of professors that makes rounds at 7 AM and 11 PM every day to make sure that their students are working. I was astounded when I learned all of this. But there is more.

Synthetic chemistry was more or less started in the 50s and 60s by a professor at Harvard. He worked his students hard. Therefore when they went out and had their own lab groups they worked their students hard. The process perpetuated itself because that's one way to get breakthroughs and results. Now 50 years later most of the respected synthetic chemistry labs in the country operate on these ridiculous schedules. Now for the gory details. The professor and Nobel laureate, Elias Corey, that started it all has had three suicides in his lab group. (By the way the article linked above is really good and very long.)

My graduate school experience is not nearly as threatening. I suspect that most graduate school students enjoy life as much as they ever have. That 70-90 hours a week attitude is not one which pervades all fields of science graduate life. I encourage people to go to graduate school but before you do make sure that it is the right choice for you.

How much do I eat?

A few weeks ago a friend asked on Facebook how much I ate every day. I've tried to track calories somewhat the past two weeks and it is not easy because many things I eat come without labels. Anyway here is a go of my Wednesday:

Breakfast 1:

Multigrain bagel: 400 calories

Breakfast 2:

14 oz 1% milk: 180 calories

Kookies (cereal): 360 calories

8 oz. coffee with three Mini-Moos and one sugar: 2+30+15=47

Lunch 1:

Hummus sandwich on oat nut bread: 280

24 oz. 1% milk: 330

Lunch 2:

Panera chicken bacon Dijon: 940 (if it was country bread)

Supper:

24 oz Gatorade: 150

Pizza at a microbrewery, not too filling: 700 calories

Long island iced tea: 250 calories

Evening:

Vitamin water 20 oz. lemonade: 125

Wednesday Total: 3,362 calories

And Tuesday:

Breakfast:

Ham, Egg and cheese on multigrain bagel at Dunkin Donuts: 590 calories

14 oz milk: 180 calories

10 oz coffee with four creamers and three sugars: 3+40+45=88 calories

Lunch:

One slice of pizza with broccoli and chicken: 250 calories

Small salad but with blue cheese dressing: 400 calories

Supper:

Spaghetti with vodka sauce, olive oil, and bay scallops: 400 calories

Ice cream: 400 calories

Tuesday total: 2,308 calories

And Monday:

Breakfast:

12 oz. Mocha: 400 calories

Two muffins: 900 calories

Lunch:

Three slices of oat nut bread: 360 calories

Hummus on each slice: 90 calories

Lunch 2:

6 oz. steak with a slice of pickle on a hot dog bun: 420 calories

one serving of bacon potato salad: 130 calories

Supper:

12" buffalo chicken pizza with pineapple from Domino's: 1000 calories

Monday total: 3,300 calories

Average over three days: 2,990 calories

This is not an exact science and I usually don't eat this much pizza or buy this much restaurant food but it is not uncommon. So I probably eat a little less than 3,000 calories a day. Also in these three days I ran 41 miles which is a little higher than normal.

Abaqus: How to Know if your Simulation is Running

As soon as you start a simulation you spend time waiting for it to finish. However, it is not obvious from Terminal (the program I use on my Mac) if the simulation is running or has stopped or ended. All you need to do is check the files in the folder or directory where you started your simulation. I use a simple program called Cyberduck. It is a file management system that allows me to navigate the servers I use (which are two buildings away) as well as download and delete files.

Now when a simulation is running in Abaqus 6.7 the files that will appear have the extensions: .stt, .msg, .odb, .sta, .res, .dat, .mdl, .log, .lck, .023, .prt, .cid, .com, .inp, and sometimes .fil depending on the simulation. The file name will be the same for all the extensions. When the simulation is over the .lck, .cid, and .023 files will disappear. That's all there is to it. Either you have those three files or you don't.

Asking the Right People the Wrong Questions

I've been struggling with an Abaqus problem recently and I asked one of the true experts of the field a question directed to what I thought the problem might be. He then answered my question with the answer to the question that I should be asking. I was totally looking in the wrong place.

I've said many times that I surround myself with great people and just draw off of them. This is another example where someone was able to answer my question, even though I wasn't really asking it. For someone that really knows their stuff it doesn't take much for him or her to understand your problem.

Find the right people in your life.