I did chemistry for 4 years and now I have a degree and that horrible feeling I will do nothing with it but use it as my ticket to ANY job besides chemistry. Of course, it's hard to tell what you want to really do if you have spent all your time in school without any work experience. Internships ae great because they tell you at least what you DON'T like, and possibly what you do.
My advice would be to try to remember that feeling of conquering the world, and see if ANY of your plans are actually feasible with what you know, or with what you know you could learn. I remember coming to college thinking that with chemistry and some physics I would single-handedly develop working nanotechnology and have a machine that made me steak! That, I see now, won't be feasible for some time to come.
More importantly, though, is that I realized that to do all those things I would have to abandon many of the relationships with friends and family that I had developed, because real "success" in these technical fields usually demands single-minded focus to the detriment of almost everything else in your life.
Sure, you hear about brilliant scientists who were quirky and interesting and who also developed Quantum Electrodynamics, but you have to realize that there is a level of obsession there that is honestly (to me, at least) creepy, and will certainly force many other things out of your life.
Of course you could get a job that is only medium-stress, medium-gain, and medium-think. But,
if you really want to be a Geek, you will tie yourself to THINGS, because that is what a Geek is at heart... a Master of Thins. If you want to deal with people (at all), you will have to come up for air and find out what truly has meaning to you.
You may find this difficult to swallow, but this is really probably the best time to figure all this stuff out because at least you are still a student, you are still young, I guess, and you stiull don't have any dependents. You could decide right now to go be a hermit and not hurt your wife and children. Of course, I don't suggest this, but that's becasue I don't want to see another Unabomber.
Anyway, jsut realize that if you are over the age of 19 and don't already have a blueprint to the next big thing, it's already probably too late, so have some fun with your life.
I say we use these things for some REAL heat dispersion: let's cool the engines of those old VW bugs! They're already air-cooled, so now we could totally overrev the things and make Herbie faster than a Ferrari. Yeeha!
Ok, so you have liquid nitrogen in a pipe.
You have to expend energy to make gaseous nitrogen (read: air) into LIQUID nitrogen. In fact, it takes a lot of energy, because it has to be compressed, and cooled at the same time. There's your cooling oil, or some such. Also, you burn fossil fuels or whatever.
But, you say, you take energy out to make it into a liquid. Again, as it is compressed and heats up,. you bleed this heat/energy by running another liquid on the outside of the reaction chamber. The hot nitrogen gives its energy to the relatively cool fluid, whatever that may be. That energy is usually not recovered.
Then, you have to pipe the nitrogen around. Usually this is done with insulated pipes so the nitrogen doesn't get hot in transit. But, of course, if you did that here the superconductor would not be chilled efficiently.
Ok, so you have liquid nitrogen in thin metal pipes that are good heat conductors. Now, most metals I know of become REALLY brittle at low temperature. That means that any kind of geological stress, like a minor earthquake or a heavy truck passing by on the road overhead, could possible shatter or just crack the pipe, allowing a leak to develop. If the pressure on that leak built up it could possibly explode, although with a nonreactive material like nitrogen this is not that likely.
And anyway, I'm sure they're only doing this because they happened to have a need for N2 nearby and decided to piggyback this superconducting thing onto it. We'll see in the next few years if this whole thing was really worth it.
I can see these things in ten years, when the bubble has REALLY burst, and they've only gotten 15 or 20 stories completed and there's an entire shanty town housed inside of it. It will be home to vagaobnds, bohemians, and terrorists, a la the remnants of the Bay Bridge for those of you who have read William Gibson's "Virtual Light". All I know is it's gonna need its own sewer system, and when that thing breaks down, everybody's in trouble.
Did anybody find out if the Monsanto crop on his farm was just randomly scattered? It may be that it was neatly planted, in its own section, cordoned off, or some such. OF course, I think Monsanto sucks, so I'm siding with Schmeiser and hoping he's not just a wily old goat.
Of course, in 20 years, when clonal technologay has advanced to the point of people having home sequencers, there will be court cases between the GIAA (Genetic Industry Associates of America) and Plantster over piracy of genetic modification algorithms. College students will claim that download the dorsal fin alteration is really a way of getting back at "The Man", and not just a free way to get really cool cosmetic surgery to look like a shark.
I recently went to a seminar by one of the leaders in this field and he was saying that while OLED's have the potential to be really great at some point in the future, they don't actually have any idea of how to make these low-powered OLED's that everybody keeps talking about. They are approaching better power efficiencies but basically, although they use less power for the same brightness, most OLED's actually lose most of their produced illuminative power insided the media they are sandwiched between by internal reflectance. Theoretically they have great efficiency compared to modern LED's but practically they have a long way to go.Until they over come these hurdles, OLED's will continue to be the stuff of World's Fairs and the like.
Of course, if electricity is no object....
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I did chemistry for 4 years and now I have a degree and that horrible feeling I will do nothing with it but use it as my ticket to ANY job besides chemistry. Of course, it's hard to tell what you want to really do if you have spent all your time in school without any work experience. Internships ae great because they tell you at least what you DON'T like, and possibly what you do.
My advice would be to try to remember that feeling of conquering the world, and see if ANY of your plans are actually feasible with what you know, or with what you know you could learn. I remember coming to college thinking that with chemistry and some physics I would single-handedly develop working nanotechnology and have a machine that made me steak! That, I see now, won't be feasible for some time to come.
More importantly, though, is that I realized that to do all those things I would have to abandon many of the relationships with friends and family that I had developed, because real "success" in these technical fields usually demands single-minded focus to the detriment of almost everything else in your life.
Sure, you hear about brilliant scientists who were quirky and interesting and who also developed Quantum Electrodynamics, but you have to realize that there is a level of obsession there that is honestly (to me, at least) creepy, and will certainly force many other things out of your life.
Of course you could get a job that is only medium-stress, medium-gain, and medium-think. But,
if you really want to be a Geek, you will tie yourself to THINGS, because that is what a Geek is at heart... a Master of Thins. If you want to deal with people (at all), you will have to come up for air and find out what truly has meaning to you.
You may find this difficult to swallow, but this is really probably the best time to figure all this stuff out because at least you are still a student, you are still young, I guess, and you stiull don't have any dependents. You could decide right now to go be a hermit and not hurt your wife and children. Of course, I don't suggest this, but that's becasue I don't want to see another Unabomber.
Anyway, jsut realize that if you are over the age of 19 and don't already have a blueprint to the next big thing, it's already probably too late, so have some fun with your life.
Even more, think about what it all means.
I say we use these things for some REAL heat dispersion: let's cool the engines of those old VW bugs! They're already air-cooled, so now we could totally overrev the things and make Herbie faster than a Ferrari. Yeeha!
Now I can buy enouigh flat panel displays to replace my windows and block out that horrible daystar thingie! Plus, I get a display wall.
Ok, so you have liquid nitrogen in a pipe. You have to expend energy to make gaseous nitrogen (read: air) into LIQUID nitrogen. In fact, it takes a lot of energy, because it has to be compressed, and cooled at the same time. There's your cooling oil, or some such. Also, you burn fossil fuels or whatever. But, you say, you take energy out to make it into a liquid. Again, as it is compressed and heats up,. you bleed this heat/energy by running another liquid on the outside of the reaction chamber. The hot nitrogen gives its energy to the relatively cool fluid, whatever that may be. That energy is usually not recovered. Then, you have to pipe the nitrogen around. Usually this is done with insulated pipes so the nitrogen doesn't get hot in transit. But, of course, if you did that here the superconductor would not be chilled efficiently. Ok, so you have liquid nitrogen in thin metal pipes that are good heat conductors. Now, most metals I know of become REALLY brittle at low temperature. That means that any kind of geological stress, like a minor earthquake or a heavy truck passing by on the road overhead, could possible shatter or just crack the pipe, allowing a leak to develop. If the pressure on that leak built up it could possibly explode, although with a nonreactive material like nitrogen this is not that likely. And anyway, I'm sure they're only doing this because they happened to have a need for N2 nearby and decided to piggyback this superconducting thing onto it. We'll see in the next few years if this whole thing was really worth it.
I can see these things in ten years, when the bubble has REALLY burst, and they've only gotten 15 or 20 stories completed and there's an entire shanty town housed inside of it. It will be home to vagaobnds, bohemians, and terrorists, a la the remnants of the Bay Bridge for those of you who have read William Gibson's "Virtual Light". All I know is it's gonna need its own sewer system, and when that thing breaks down, everybody's in trouble.
Did anybody find out if the Monsanto crop on his farm was just randomly scattered? It may be that it was neatly planted, in its own section, cordoned off, or some such. OF course, I think Monsanto sucks, so I'm siding with Schmeiser and hoping he's not just a wily old goat. Of course, in 20 years, when clonal technologay has advanced to the point of people having home sequencers, there will be court cases between the GIAA (Genetic Industry Associates of America) and Plantster over piracy of genetic modification algorithms. College students will claim that download the dorsal fin alteration is really a way of getting back at "The Man", and not just a free way to get really cool cosmetic surgery to look like a shark.
I recently went to a seminar by one of the leaders in this field and he was saying that while OLED's have the potential to be really great at some point in the future, they don't actually have any idea of how to make these low-powered OLED's that everybody keeps talking about. They are approaching better power efficiencies but basically, although they use less power for the same brightness, most OLED's actually lose most of their produced illuminative power insided the media they are sandwiched between by internal reflectance. Theoretically they have great efficiency compared to modern LED's but practically they have a long way to go.Until they over come these hurdles, OLED's will continue to be the stuff of World's Fairs and the like. Of course, if electricity is no object....