An exemplar is an excellent model of something. Engineering has its exemplars—people
who excel at their work so well that it's worthwhile to point them out as good
examples. The aerospace engineer
Destin Sandlin is an exemplar in a corner of engineering we don't think much
about: explaining engineering and
science concepts to the general public.
Believe it or not, some of the ethics codes of engineering societies
call for their members to do this.
Members of the IEEE (which used to stand for Institute of Electrical and
Electronics Engineers before they changed it to just the initials) are
committed "to improve the understanding of technology; its
appropriate application, and potential consequences." One engineer who is
doing a lot in that direction right now is Destin Sandlin.
Mr. Sandlin has a graduate degree in aerospace engineering from the University of
Alabama at Huntsville and works as a missile flight test engineer at the
Redstone Arsenal. Some time in the
late 2000s, he posted a video on YouTube showing his friends how to light a
bonfire with rockets. They liked
it so much that he started making more videos. It's now a collection of videos he calls Smarter Every Day. He's now up to No. 142, at least, and now has over two
million subscribers and 24 videos that have received more than a million views
each.
What does he talk about? All kinds of cool stuff involving technology, explained in a
visually appealing way with well-produced graphics and a narration by Mr.
Sandlin himself. He is the opposite
of the stereotypical inarticulate nerdy engineer, as you might expect from
someone who won the University of Alabama's Outstanding Senior Award. (Notice that's not Outstanding
Engineering Major, but Outstanding Senior—period.) I discovered his videos while searching for high-speed
photography videos, and came upon one that dealt with a thing called a Prince Rupert's drop. Go look at it to
find out what it is—it has to do with dropping very hot glass into cold
water. I was impressed by his
combination of clarity, technical correctness, and enthusiasm. Plus which, he shows some really neat
high-speed videos of how the thing works.
His videos aren't just all about technology—he gets into
engineering ethics in a way too.
For example, one of his recent videos covers the three-in-a-row explosions of cargo-rocket launches that were intended to resupply the
International Space Station. Ever
the optimist, his take on them is that if we were going to have some rockets
blow up, this was the perfect time for it to happen, when the Space Station
happens to have rather a surplus of food and before we start putting people on
those rockets.
Cameras that can take 100,000 frames per second aren't
cheap, and I wondered how Mr. Sandlin pays for all the production expenses of
his videos—green screens, high-quality graphics, and so on. Well, several ways, it appears. One is contributions—you can donate to
his effort through a website called Patreon. Another is advertising—some of the later videos have little
ads at the end for various products (the one I saw boosted a book sold by
Amazon). And there's the revenue
from the YouTube viewings. He is
up front about his hopes that Smarter Every Day will provide funds for his
children's college education, and there's nothing wrong with that. So he's an entrepreneur of a sort as
well as an engineer, which is a good combination.
One thing that's fairly certain is that Mr. Sandlin
hasn't gotten any money from the National Science Foundation. If he had, they would have insisted
that he have some kind of acknowledgment of the fact. Over the years, I have been peripherally involved with
NSF-sponsored efforts in the area of engineering education. It turns out the kind of skills that
enable one to raise or spend NSF education money are not always the kind of
skills needed to appeal to a wide popular audience. NSF would like both, of course, and every now and then, an
NSF-sponsored project designed to explain or promote engineering to the general
public actually gets a fair number of the general public to pay attention to
it. But successes like that are
generally few and far between.
I would point out that Mr. Sandlin has no degree in education—or mass
communication, for that matter.
All he had to start with is enthusiasm and a motivation to pay for his
kids' college expenses. And he's
come up with something that presents engineering in a positive light to
millions of people. I'm not saying
that government support for engineering education efforts directed at the
general public is wasted, but Mr. Sandlin's work proves that it's not
necessary, and the number of failed projects in that area proves that it's not
sufficient, either.
One personal example of how not to do it will suffice
here. Years ago I made a misguided
attempt to develop a kind of computer-based learning module for
non-engineers. I took a lot of NSF
money and spent a whole summer at Cornell University with a grad student,
learning how to use a very early version of development software for that kind
of thing. The project was used in
an experimental course once, and that was that. Clearly, it was not my forte.
Mr. Sandlin makes it look easy, but he says on his
website that each video takes upwards of 100 hours to produce, and I believe
him. What he's doing deserves the
support and encouragement of the engineering community, and so I encourage my
readers to take a look at www.smartereveryday.com. If you like what you see, let Mr. Sandlin know. He's doing a good thing for engineering
and the world.
Sources: I encountered Mr. Sandlin's work in the
form of his video on Prince Rupert's drops at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe-f4gokRBs. His video on the cargo-rocket
explosions is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbabP9ttrZc. His main website is
www.smartereveryday.com, and I also referred to the Wikipedia article
"Destin Sandlin."
No comments:
Post a Comment