One day I was sitting like a couch potato on the most comfortable chair inside a lab. Accompanying me were a bunch of postgraduate students and technicians. A friend of mine suddenly came in and told a story about a senior who must accept the fate that his graduation was going to be postponed. Curios, we all asked that friend of mine about what could’ve caused that uncommon thing to happen. His explanation almost turned my mouth into an exploding-insult-and-laughter-bomb. “Imagine there were no graphs, no images, no statements, no conclusions, no written explanations, he just showed a bunch of numbers…on a table form…just like a bingo board with one difference: instead of whole numbers, the table contains decimals too”, he said expressively. This fact tickled my inner thought and thank goodness we caught ourselves engaged in a good conversation about something very important: scientists and engineers.
What is the difference between a scientist and an engineer? According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a scientist is a person learned in science and especially natural science while an engineer is a person who specializes in a branch of engineering. Engineering itself is defined as the application of science and mathematics by which the properties of matter and the sources of energy in nature are made useful to people. According to the given definitions, we can make a short review based on the words and phrases being used:
- a scientist have NO obligation to make sure that his/her discoveries are useful…at all
- an engineer works in a specified field of engineering, therefore he/she MUST be aware of what ‘engineering’ is
- engineering demands that the things SCIENTISTS have discovered can be used to help society
The chain starts from the scientists. They conducted researches, experiments, tests and gained data which we assume are going to be documented properly, either by the scientists themselves or using help of assistants…or both. These documented data and information must be ‘scientific’ to be considered valid, therefore scientists must use what we’ve known as ‘scientific methods’ during the whole process. Simply speaking the input for a scientist is a ‘concept/hypothesis’ and the output is a ‘conclusion/database’.
By default, engineers work by using the output given by the scientists. The conclusion/database is used as a reference to understand the nature of things they’re dealing with, only to be used later to construct something that actually applies in real life or a concrete solution to presented actual problems.
From the short review above, we can easily differ an engineer from a scientist. Well, it’s still so…’textbook’ of course! Now let me ask something to test your understanding, a real example: Albert Einstein, a scientist or an engineer? The answer is: a scientist who left engineering! It is very common that a scientist invented real and useful things while an engineer developed a new mathematical formula. This is due to the overlapping obligation for both parties to learn science and sometimes the best way to observe science is by taking a look at the physical world.
After understanding all of the above, the ultimate question emerges: how and why are these blabbering somehow related to that senior’s failure to graduate? Notice that my friend described the absence of any visual/graphic agents during that senior’s presentation. My senior had all the data, he built a program and it gave ( I assume ) correct/expected output. The problem is he failed to COMMUNICATE to the audience and attending lectors about what he had been doing and just presented. Recall that an engineer must apply his/her skills to help people, but there is also an unwritten…sort of ‘caution’ that he/she must also BE ABLE TO CONVINCE people about the help which is being offered. An engineer must be able to present ideas in front of quite a lot of audience types, ranging from professors to ‘uneducated’ people. Being ‘able’ here doesn’t only mean that he/she understands the whole idea and explaining it but also able to make sure that his/her audience can achieve a certain level of understanding about the idea. And that could’ve been achieved by that senior of mine by simply inserting graphs, brief explanations text, images, videos or any other tools. And if he did that, of course he would’ve been a bachelor of engineering today.
By the end of the discussion, we discovered that this senior of mine had issues back then related to his communication ability. I suspected that he had never realized ( maybe until now ) about that incapability and how it affects him as a human being, let alone as an engineer. Some of us also speculated that the curriculum organized by the faculty and government also had something to do with this case ( since it’s very common to see people here with amazing calculating skill but poor presentation ability ). Aside from all of that, I’m grateful a lector once gave an advice to me and a few fellow students,“Your calculations may be right, the numbers might be making sense, but remember to bring them back to the real world. Make sure no silly or unnecessary problems will occur once the design is implemented!”. I hope this post helps every readers out there in any way and gave everybody insight. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for the next post.
*Note: Merriam-Webster dictionary is the only reference in this post. No pictures/images either. I mean, what do you expect from a mid day chit-chat in a cold, dull lab?
