When I was a toddler I developed an enormous interest in a machine, our village bus. I was truly fascinated by it. When I was like 4 or 5 years old, my everyday routine was to run in the morning around 7AM to the village bus stand and observe goings on in and around the bus. The bus would leave for Chinthamani at 8AM, but most of my interest was in cleaning and preparing the bus to depart.
The first activity was to push the bus to the village tank (this was actually a small dam) about 500 yards from the stand. Why the bus was pushed rather than driven, I don't know to this day. Who would push? Under the approval and direction of the Cleaner of the bus it was the kids like me who would do it. It was a privilege for us. Every bus would have three workers, a driver, a conductor whose job was to collect fare, and the cleaner who job was to keep the bus clean, do minor repairs, haul passengers' luggage to the roof of the bus and bring it down, and to yell "Right" when everyone has boarded and the bus is ready to leave.
For me the driver's job deserved utmost respect, operating this superb device to move people and their stuff for miles cannot be a simple thing. Hierarchically, the conductor came next, but that job didn't interest me at all. It was the cleaner who I aspired to become one day! What a privilege it would be to clean the dirty old monstrosity to a gleaming beauty! How exciting it is to touch and fix the mechanical parts of an unbelievably huge contraption! I would watch with awe as the cleaner cleaned and did repairs.
My own contribution in this daily ritual was to take part in pushing the bus to the tank and cheer lead. I was small and hardly could reach the rear bumper, but when I shouted "dabbandra" (this Telugu word means "everyone push"), all my friends positioned symmetrically around the bus would push in synchrony. I would lie on the ground and watch wondrously as the cleaner worked on on the underside of the bus.
I formulated a few fundamental questions during my these formative years.
After high school I was lucky enough to get admission to an engineering college to study mechanical engineering. My high school grades were not great and I would have been rejected in the previous years. But that was the year when engineering graduates couldn't get jobs and no one wanted to become an engineer. My mechanical engineering undergraduate education helped me completely understand the answers to the first two questions and partially understand the answer to the third question.
I went off to IIT - Delhi to do my masters in Production and Industrial engineering. The two years I spent there helped me understand the answer completely to my third question. The reader may think I systematically followed my college education to find answers to my childhood questions. Let me remind you there was no concerted effort on my part and it was all accidental.
After my MTech I joined work to support my parents and brothers and sister and the last question went unanswered. That is until I joined the University of Utah at Salt lake City for PhD. It would have been romantic to say, well, I joined the PhD program to find answer to one remaining question that bothered me when I was ten year old. But, sorry, I had no such noble purpose.
In fact, my initial research was in an area that would take me nowhere in terms of answering my childhood question But I dropped and switched midstream to an entirely different area just because I was captivated by Professor DeVries's teaching. Professor D was the most intelligent man I had met in my life. He could take one look at a small broken part of a car and reconstruct how the accident happened.
The last question was the hardest question; it required understanding the innermost dynamics of materials at the molecular level. That was my PhD thesis. To understand how polymers and elastomers ("elastomer" is the fancy name for rubbers - remember my question about rubber tires?) behave and what happens to their mechanical properties when they are subjected to a tough environment such as UV in sunlight, ozone, sulfur dioxide, etc.
After my PhD I got three offers in Bell Labs; one job was directly elated to my PhD research. Did I join that position? No, I joined a job (still at Bell Labs) that had nothing to do with my PhD work. It was as if with my education up to PhD I had answered all my childhood questions and now I was ready to move on!
I have to conclude, this post is becoming too long already. The direction my education took was serendipitous. I like the word serendipity. It means you will get what you want even when you tried to get something else. Serendipity is different from accident. Accident may result in good or bad, usually bad. A person of faith might say, a superior force interrupts your plan and makes it better for you!
The first activity was to push the bus to the village tank (this was actually a small dam) about 500 yards from the stand. Why the bus was pushed rather than driven, I don't know to this day. Who would push? Under the approval and direction of the Cleaner of the bus it was the kids like me who would do it. It was a privilege for us. Every bus would have three workers, a driver, a conductor whose job was to collect fare, and the cleaner who job was to keep the bus clean, do minor repairs, haul passengers' luggage to the roof of the bus and bring it down, and to yell "Right" when everyone has boarded and the bus is ready to leave.
For me the driver's job deserved utmost respect, operating this superb device to move people and their stuff for miles cannot be a simple thing. Hierarchically, the conductor came next, but that job didn't interest me at all. It was the cleaner who I aspired to become one day! What a privilege it would be to clean the dirty old monstrosity to a gleaming beauty! How exciting it is to touch and fix the mechanical parts of an unbelievably huge contraption! I would watch with awe as the cleaner cleaned and did repairs.
My own contribution in this daily ritual was to take part in pushing the bus to the tank and cheer lead. I was small and hardly could reach the rear bumper, but when I shouted "dabbandra" (this Telugu word means "everyone push"), all my friends positioned symmetrically around the bus would push in synchrony. I would lie on the ground and watch wondrously as the cleaner worked on on the underside of the bus.
I formulated a few fundamental questions during my these formative years.
- How does the bus move?
- I could see the propeller shaft (I didn't know that is what it was called) underside the bus turn one way and tires another. I figured out that those two motions were related and one caused the other, but couldn't figure out how.
- A bus has tens of thousands of parts. How are these made?
- I was absolutely amazed that the tires made of rubber could stand the huge load and move the bus. I would have thought iron wheels would have better suited. I was also amazed at the thin layer of paint on the body. How could this material adhere so strongly to the surface and prevent it from rusting, scratching, etc?
After high school I was lucky enough to get admission to an engineering college to study mechanical engineering. My high school grades were not great and I would have been rejected in the previous years. But that was the year when engineering graduates couldn't get jobs and no one wanted to become an engineer. My mechanical engineering undergraduate education helped me completely understand the answers to the first two questions and partially understand the answer to the third question.
I went off to IIT - Delhi to do my masters in Production and Industrial engineering. The two years I spent there helped me understand the answer completely to my third question. The reader may think I systematically followed my college education to find answers to my childhood questions. Let me remind you there was no concerted effort on my part and it was all accidental.
After my MTech I joined work to support my parents and brothers and sister and the last question went unanswered. That is until I joined the University of Utah at Salt lake City for PhD. It would have been romantic to say, well, I joined the PhD program to find answer to one remaining question that bothered me when I was ten year old. But, sorry, I had no such noble purpose.
In fact, my initial research was in an area that would take me nowhere in terms of answering my childhood question But I dropped and switched midstream to an entirely different area just because I was captivated by Professor DeVries's teaching. Professor D was the most intelligent man I had met in my life. He could take one look at a small broken part of a car and reconstruct how the accident happened.
The last question was the hardest question; it required understanding the innermost dynamics of materials at the molecular level. That was my PhD thesis. To understand how polymers and elastomers ("elastomer" is the fancy name for rubbers - remember my question about rubber tires?) behave and what happens to their mechanical properties when they are subjected to a tough environment such as UV in sunlight, ozone, sulfur dioxide, etc.
After my PhD I got three offers in Bell Labs; one job was directly elated to my PhD research. Did I join that position? No, I joined a job (still at Bell Labs) that had nothing to do with my PhD work. It was as if with my education up to PhD I had answered all my childhood questions and now I was ready to move on!
I have to conclude, this post is becoming too long already. The direction my education took was serendipitous. I like the word serendipity. It means you will get what you want even when you tried to get something else. Serendipity is different from accident. Accident may result in good or bad, usually bad. A person of faith might say, a superior force interrupts your plan and makes it better for you!
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