Lawaranceville E-Newsletter

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

Moderators: tonybarry, MSimon

Skipjack
Posts: 6823
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Post by Skipjack »

If you would see list of team members of any fusion experiment you would see at least third of them are engineers.
We all here are discussing on definition.
For example, injection of high current into synchrotron without particles losses is scientific or engineering challenge?
Or how to avoid anode erosion in Focus Fusion Device?

And who is scientist? The man having PhD degree, only theoretic, who a little bit or significantly changed anode’s design in others invention?
Who?
And that differs from what I said exactly where?
Yes, there are many engineers involved with fusion experiments. The goal of the engineers is usually to make things work.
The scientists want results, one way or the other. If they discover a previously unknown problem, they view that as A result too and write a paper about it. Being a scientist versus an engineer, has, IMHO nothing to do with the title, or the degree, or whatsoever. You can be a scientist and not have a degree at all. All you need is the will to do research and apply the scientific method. You also need the will to accept results that are not what you expected and see them as what they are "scientific discovery".
But then, this is probably hard to understand for engineers, who most of all want to make things work and see something that does not work as expected as a failure.
Or let me put things in another way:
Engineers get paid to make things work as expected.
Scientists get paid to research things, whether they work as expected or not is note quite as relevant (not always completely true, but this is a generalization).
Its like what Dr. B said about the Toks: It will never make for a practical fusion reactor, but its really good science...

Joseph Chikva
Posts: 2039
Joined: Sat Apr 02, 2011 4:30 am

Post by Joseph Chikva »

Skipjack wrote:Its like what Dr. B said about the Toks: It will never make for a practical fusion reactor, but its really good science...
I am tied.
I was involved in number of engineering projects.
And often in engineering there is necessity to find optimal solution. And that may not always be trivial task. So, I did not know that I am scientist and not engineer. :)

icarus
Posts: 819
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 12:48 am

Post by icarus »

Now where does that leave your intrepid "Engineering Scientist" I wonder?

Ecstatically writing up null results or moving on quietly?

Skipjack
Posts: 6823
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Post by Skipjack »

Now where does that leave your intrepid "Engineering Scientist" I wonder?

Ecstatically writing up null results or moving on quietly?
They are the ones that spend to much time on forums like these ;)

Joseph Chikva
Posts: 2039
Joined: Sat Apr 02, 2011 4:30 am

Post by Joseph Chikva »

Skipjack wrote:
Now where does that leave your intrepid "Engineering Scientist" I wonder?

Ecstatically writing up null results or moving on quietly?
They are the ones that spend to much time on forums like these ;)
If you both about me, "ecstatically writing up principals and not results"
And you do not know on what I spend my time now.
And being here for me is only exercise in English.

krenshala
Posts: 914
Joined: Wed Jul 16, 2008 4:20 pm
Location: Austin, TX, NorAm, Sol III

Post by krenshala »

Joseph Chikva wrote:
Skipjack wrote:
Now where does that leave your intrepid "Engineering Scientist" I wonder?

Ecstatically writing up null results or moving on quietly?
They are the ones that spend to much time on forums like these ;)
If you both about me, "ecstatically writing up principals and not results"
And you do not know on what I spend my time now.
And being here for me is only exercise in English.
I'm thinking there was a translation error or two there. The quoted bit (Ecstatically writing up null results or moving on quietly) has a different meaning than what you posted in your comment (Ecstatically writing up principals and not results).

Joseph Chikva
Posts: 2039
Joined: Sat Apr 02, 2011 4:30 am

Post by Joseph Chikva »

krenshala wrote:I'm thinking there was a translation error or two there. The quoted bit (Ecstatically writing up null results or moving on quietly) has a different meaning than what you posted in your comment (Ecstatically writing up principals and not results).
There is not error in translation. I meant that I have written principals and not results how to produce fusion when others can't.
Principals as I understand are in the beginning. Results are after financing, building, testing and publication.
But principals are first.

krenshala
Posts: 914
Joined: Wed Jul 16, 2008 4:20 pm
Location: Austin, TX, NorAm, Sol III

Post by krenshala »

Joseph Chikva wrote:
krenshala wrote:I'm thinking there was a translation error or two there. The quoted bit (Ecstatically writing up null results or moving on quietly) has a different meaning than what you posted in your comment (Ecstatically writing up principals and not results).
There is not error in translation. I meant that I have written principals and not results how to produce fusion when others can't.
Principals as I understand are in the beginning. Results are after financing, building, testing and publication.
But principals are first.
Just to be sure we're on the same page: "null results" does not equal "not results".

Joseph Chikva
Posts: 2039
Joined: Sat Apr 02, 2011 4:30 am

Post by Joseph Chikva »

krenshala wrote:Just to be sure we're on the same page: "null results" does not equal "not results".
What's a difference?

Giorgio
Posts: 3068
Joined: Wed Oct 07, 2009 6:15 pm
Location: China, Italy

Post by Giorgio »

The definition of Null results and negative results is quite controversial in scientific world, I will try to give you the one I feel is most accepted:

"Null results": You make you experiment, collect data, and discover that the experimental idea is not giving the expected result, so you are producing negative results. Null results.

"Not Results": You cannot even start the experiment or the experiment is done in a way that the collected data are useless or inconclusive, so you produce "No Results", neither positive nor negative.

Joseph Chikva
Posts: 2039
Joined: Sat Apr 02, 2011 4:30 am

Post by Joseph Chikva »

Giorgio wrote:The definition of Null results and negative results is quite controversial in scientific world, I will try to give you the one I feel is most accepted:

"Null results": You make you experiment, collect data, and discover that the experimental idea is not giving the expected result, so you are producing negative results. Null results.

"Not Results": You cannot even start the experiment or the experiment is done in a way that the collected data are useless or inconclusive, so you produce "No Results", neither positive nor negative.
If I unsuccessfully very much like to reach something, I do not go into the depth of linguistic jungle and the most common word for me is Georgian equivalent of English "f…ck".
May be because of vicious education. :)

ladajo
Posts: 6258
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 11:18 pm
Location: North East Coast

Post by ladajo »

See Joeseph, that is the heart of the matter. An Engineer will use bad words when the goal is not reached, a scientist is happy because he has an answer.

Joseph Chikva
Posts: 2039
Joined: Sat Apr 02, 2011 4:30 am

Post by Joseph Chikva »

ladajo wrote:See Joeseph, that is the heart of the matter. An Engineer will use bad words when the goal is not reached, a scientist is happy because he has an answer.
If so, I am only engineer. :)
But does words make a big sense?

Skipjack
Posts: 6823
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:29 pm

Post by Skipjack »

An Engineer will use bad words when the goal is not reached, a scientist is happy because he has an answer.
Good explanation.
Maybe one could say it like this:
An engineer is looking for solutions, a scientist for answers.

KitemanSA
Posts: 6179
Joined: Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:05 pm
Location: OlyPen WA

Post by KitemanSA »

Skipjack wrote: An engineer is looking for solutions, a scientist for answers.
Good one, but maybe an improvement:
An engineer is looking for any path to a solution, a scientist for is looking for a specific path to an answer.

Post Reply