An engineering mechanics journey

 

photo by Alex Litvin from unsplash

It might be an exaggeration to say that my academic career has done a 180-degree turn, but I think a 45-degree change is more accurate. I’m working here as a mechanical engineer instead of a physicist. This is, without a doubt, the most fun and exciting part of my job. I must study the laws of physics and mathematical concepts from an engineering point of view. This sometimes comes with a bit of frustration as well. I often find myself thinking, how is it possible that I have been studying mechanics and thermodynamics for at least fifteen years, and I have never heard about the balance equations (the continuous form of the laws of thermodynamics and mechanics) or the stress and strain constitutive laws, a.k.a. how materials react when they deform.

For this and other reasons that aren’t important for this post, I haven’t published anything on this blog for a while… Nonetheless, I’m back, and this time I want to change the direction of it a bit. Instead of writing about random topics that come to my mind, I’ll focus on my learning of continuum mechanics and how I must rethink my knowledge of physics to make it useful here. I will also move to Paris in September. I am not sure where yet, but my boss has offered me the possibility to stay in one of three places: the ESPCI Paris, the École Polytechnique, or ONERA. To help me decide, she has scheduled visits with the directors of the mechanics departments at each of these institutions to learn more about their research topics and interests. And one of my visits were very fruitful. So, I want it to share this experience with you!

Guess who? The Glass community version

My visits to these universities started with the ESPCI Paris, which is the French acronym for "The City of Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution." I didn’t choose this place to visit first; in fact, I came here a week earlier than my scheduled visit to Paris. The reason was that a professor from the ESPCI organized an "informal" meeting with some of the biggest names in the glass community. And when I say big names, I mean really big names. Among them was my boss, who decided to bring me along because I needed to do some networking (despite the fact that I wasn’t invited at all). I have been working with glasses for almost eleven years, and during this time, I have read a lot of scientific work and advancements about the glass transition. I have to say that about 70% of the people at this meeting were authors whose papers I have read. I felt like I was walking in the Hollywood of glasses, surrounded by the biggest celebrities in the field. To make things even more stressful, my boss, without telling me beforehand, asked the organizer to let me give a talk to present my work in front of all these glass stars. Since I have only been in Lyon for seven months and have been working on my project for roughly five months, I panicked. I felt a lot of stress, and my impostor syndrome reached its highest level and the organizer have the nice idea of schedule my talk for the last day (which, as far as I'm concerned, is a form of torture). The funny thing is, I had read most of the papers by these people, but I had never seen their faces before. When I read a paper, I don’t usually look up the author’s photo online, so those days felt like a game of "guess who" (glass community edition). I was constantly thinking, "Ah, this is so-and-so," or "Oh, that’s another one," and so on. Additionally, I am a computational physicist, so part of my work involves acquiring programming skills and efficiently use my computational tools. So, I want to share three “skills” I’ve learn (or I trying to incorporate in my daily work) during my “networking meeting”:

I. Use PowerPoint to make presentations! I consider myself a TeX enthusiast, and I really like how articles and documents with lots of equations look in LaTeX. However, when it comes to projecting slides, PowerPoint is miles ahead of Beamer, or at least this is my humble opinion. This is not something I learned during the meeting. I stopped using Beamer in 2014 when I moved to Brazil. I remember that during this time, I also stopped using Windows as my operating system and started using Linux, and therefore LibreOffice. In fact, until last month, I was defending the idea that LibreOffice presentations were as good as PowerPoint. Maybe someone who is an expert in Linux would tell me that it is indeed as good as PowerPoint. However, during those days, I saw the power and practicality of the latter. Even though a very good friend of mine, whom I have the highest respect for when it comes to science, had already recommended that I should stop using LibreOffice and start using PowerPoint, but of course I was always ignoring his advice. Now, I am taking some tips from him on how to create very nice slides in PowerPoint. So, don’t be as stubborn as I was. Make your presentations in PowerPoint, even if your growing physics ego urges you to use LaTeX and all the amazing things you can program there.

II. Being a multilingual interpreter is a must! This is something I already learned during my Ph.D. Since every computational scientist has their own preferred programming language. I personally feel quite comfortable programming in Python, but C++ is also okay for me. Of course, there is a countless list of programming languages, each offering its own advantages and disadvantages. The choice of programming language to master will depend on individual needs. Here in Lyon, my boss programs in Fortran, a language I had always avoided because it seemed old and difficult to me. When I arrived here, she gave me the option to program in the language I felt comfortable with, but she would only be able to help me if I programmed in Fortran. (By the way, I always think that when a "but" comes in a sentence, the previous part is generally a form of politeness, so you don’t feel bad before the real message. It’s like when somebody wants to end a relationship and says, "It isn’t you, it’s me." It’s just a polite way of saying, "It’s you.") Ok, to the point here, I spent the whole December learning how to program in Fortran and I have to admit that I found some functionalities very useful. However, when I had to make some modifications to the code my boss had written (a 700-line code), it was quite painful. I realized that I had become a passive "Fortran speaker." I can read and understand Fortran code very well, but when I have to write or modify something, it becomes a painful task, sometimes taking days to accomplish something I could do in Python in minutes. This was really frustrating. At the glass meeting, I noticed that those people have collaborations with each other and use their own programming languages. I realized that all of them are, at least in this sense, like me: they are very good in a specific programming language and can interpret the others very well. When they need to use a program written by a collaborator in another language, they immediately translate it to the language they are experts in and only then start the modifications. This might sound like double the work at first, but believe me, it will save you a lot of frustration and time. Not to mention how much you can learn about the coding process itself when you translate someone else’s code. I remember reading advice from Julio Cortázar about how to write good texts. One of his tips was to translate as much text as you can. After a while, you will notice that your vocabulary and writing technique have improved without you even realizing it. I think it’s the same with programming languages. Translate the codes you receive into your preferred language. Your research life will be a bit easier if you do, and you will improve your programming skills as a side benefit.

III. It's not personal it’s physics! One of my favorite TV shows is RuPaul's Drag Race, which is full of memorable quotes from the queens. One of my favorites is: “It’s not personal, it’s drag,” from Alyssa Edwards. I think this concept applies not just to drag but to any profession. When the conference started, I was stressed, imagining that these people would destroy my work and consider me a useless scientist wasting my boss's money (yes, I can be very dramatic). However, I noticed that when each speaker finished their talk, the others would ask very critical questions. If they saw something weird or inconsistent, they pointed it out without hesitation. Sometimes, there was a bit of friction between them. However, during breaks, they remained good friends and even sat together to clarify their points. Criticizing work, whether positively or negatively, is not related to the person or their abilities as a scientist. There’s no personal argument; it’s physics. When it was my turn, I received some critiques about my work and the method I used. Again, it’s not about me as a scientist; it’s not personal, it’s physics. I know it’s very hard to hear criticism about something you’ve been working on for a long time and put all your effort into, but these critiques are necessary for you to improve as a scientist. You always have to keep in mind that it’s not personal. Expect for very unhappy people, we always have to separate work from personal life. As researchers, this is a challenging task since our work often comprises almost 90% of our life. But as soon as we get over this, our academic journey will become a bit less toxic. Again, in the words of Alyssa: “Get a grip, get a life, and get over it.”

I'll finish this post here, with the promise to start explaining a bit of continuum mechanics in future posts. The first one will be about vectors on steroids, a.k.a. Tensors. I'll do my best to make it as clear as possible. See you then, and I wish you a good week.